Raymond Carver

Don’t complain, don’t explain.

— Raymond Carver

“I love you, Bro”

— Raymond Carver

I am too nervous to eat pie.

— Raymond Carver

She won't give him back his look.

— Raymond Carver

I am a cigarette with a body attached to it

— Raymond Carver

and did you get what you wanted from this life even so? i did.

— Raymond Carver

A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

— Raymond Carver

“My lungs are thick with the smoke of your absence.”

— Raymond Carver

What good are insights? They only make things worse.

— Raymond Carver

You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk.

— Raymond Carver

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

— Raymond Carver

What do any of us really know about love?

— Raymond Carver

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

— Raymond Carver

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

— 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

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

— Raymond Carver

A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don't matter a damn anymore.

— Raymond Carver

I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.

— Raymond Carver

Booze takes a lot of time and effort if you're going to do a good job with it.

— Raymond Carver

Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.

— Raymond Carver

All of us, all of us, all of us trying to save our immortal souls, some ways seemingly more round about and…

— Raymond Carver

It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to…

— Raymond Carver

A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he…

— 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…

— Raymond Carver

“The past is unclear. It's as if there is a film over those early years. I can't even be sure that the…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— Raymond Carver

“Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read. Fought against it for a minute.…

— Raymond Carver

“My Death If I’m lucky, I’ll be wired every whichway in a hospital bed. Tubes running into my nose. But try not…

— Raymond Carver

“Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull…

— Raymond Carver

“V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.' Notice the 'glimpse' part…

— Raymond Carver

“I hate tricks. At the first sign of a trick or gimmick in a piece of fiction, a cheap trick or even…

— Raymond Carver

“ Happiness So early it's still almost dark out. I'm near the window with coffee, and the usual early morning stuff that…

— Raymond Carver

It's akin to style, what I'm talking about, but it isn't style alone. It is the writer's particular and unmistakable signature on…

— Raymond Carver

“It was [John Gardner's] conviction that if the words in the story were blurred because of the author's insensitivity, carelessness, or sentimentality,…

— Raymond Carver

“Dreams are what you wake up from.”

— Raymond Carver

Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.

— Raymond Carver

I guess my writing has changed as my life has.

— Raymond Carver

Writers will be judged by what they write.

— Raymond Carver