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

Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.

Raymond Carver

There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.

Raymond Carver

You see, this happened a few months ago, but it's still going on right now, and it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.

Raymond Carver

I'm moving to Nevada. Either there or kill myself.

Raymond Carver

A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

Raymond Carver

The fiction I'm most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.

Raymond Carver

When I'm writing, I write every day. It's lovely when that's happening. One day dovetailing into the next. Sometimes I don't even know what day of the week it is.

Raymond Carver

In the beginning, when I was trying to write, I couldn't turn off the outside world to the extent that I can now.

Raymond Carver

When I'm fishing, I feel guilty that I'm not writing, and when I'm writing, I feel guilty that I'm not fishing. But when push comes to shove, I'll always take the writing.

Raymond Carver

Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different.

Raymond Carver

She serves me a piece of it a few minutes out of the oven. A little steam rises from the slits on top. Sugar and spice - cinnamon - burned into the crust. But she's wearing these dark glasses in the kitchen at ten o'clock in the morning - everything ...

Raymond Carver

So early it's still almost dark out. I'm near the window with coffee, and the usual early morning stuff that passes for thought. When I see the boy and his friend walking up the road to deliver the newspaper. They wear caps and sweaters, and one boy ...

Raymond Carver

Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.

Raymond Carver

I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.

Raymond Carver

My circumstances of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction necessitated the short story form.

Raymond Carver

It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.

Raymond Carver

Sai bene che non sogno. Ma ieri notte ho sognato che assistevamo a un funerale nel mare. All’inizio ero attonito. Poi pieno di rimpianti. Ma tu m’hai sfiorato un braccio e hai detto: “no, va tutto bene. Era molto vecchia, e poi lui l’ha amata...

Raymond Carver

Write what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?

Raymond Carver

That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.

Raymond Carver

It's possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things-- a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring-- with immense, even startling ...

Raymond Carver

For a long time I wanted to do the kind of work my dad did. He was going to ask his foreman at the mill to put me on after I graduated. So I worked at the mill for about six months. But I hated the work and knew from the first day I didn't want to do...

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