Quotes by Raymond Carver

About Raymond Carver:

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver contributed to the revitalization of the American short story in literature during the 1980s.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on s...

Raymond Carver

If we're lucky, writer and reader alike, we'll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we'll ponder what we've just written or read; maybe our hearts or intellects will have been moved off the pe...

Raymond Carver

They talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, and they did not think of leaving.

Raymond Carver

Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.

Raymond Carver

I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.

Raymond Carver

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

Raymond Carver

But dying is for the sweetest ones. And he remembers sweetness, when life was sweet, and sweetly he was given that other lifetime.

Raymond Carver

there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.

Raymond Carver

There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I'd like to know. I wish someone could tell me.

Raymond Carver

They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else--the cold, and where he'd go in it--was outside, for a while anyway.

Raymond Carver

And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, is that if something happened to one of us--excuse me for saying this--but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, ...

Raymond Carver

Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'...

Raymond Carver

The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.

Raymond Carver

But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window--maybe rearrange all the furniture.

Raymond Carver

I'm a heart surgeon, sure, but I'm just a mechanic. I go in and I fuck around and I fix things. Shit.

Raymond Carver

We knew our days were numbered. We had fouled up our lives and we were getting ready for a shake-up.

Raymond Carver

I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning ...

Raymond Carver

This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.

Raymond Carver

That's right,' Mel said. 'Some vassal would come along and spear the bastard in the name of love. Or whatever the fuck it was they fought over in those days.' Same things we fight over these days,' Terri said. Laura said, 'Nothing's changed.

Raymond Carver

I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We ...

Raymond Carver

Author Bio

  • NameRaymond Carver
  • DescriptionAmerican short story author and poet
  • BornMay 25, 1938
  • DiedAugust 2, 1988
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Poet
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship