Raymond Carver

Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. He'd said he'd spent five years in a seminary before quitting to…

— Raymond Carver

“All I know about this fine, sweaty life, my own or anyone else’s, is that in a little while I’ll rise up…

— 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…

— Raymond Carver

Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose.…

— Raymond Carver

When you're writing fiction or poetry... it really comes down to this: indifference to everything except what you're doing... A young writer…

— Raymond Carver

“You sound like a nice man,” the woman said. “Do I? Well, that’s nice of you to say.” He knew he should…

— Raymond Carver

Most of my stories, if not all of them, have some basis in real life. That's the kind of fiction I'm most…

— Raymond Carver

My heart is broken,” she goes. “It’s turned to a piece of stone. I’m no good. That’s what’s as bad as anything,…

— Raymond Carver

“At least I want to get up early one more morning, before sunrise. Before the birds, even. I want to throw cold…

— 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…

— Raymond Carver

I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that…

— Raymond Carver

Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of…

— Raymond Carver

Something’s died in me,” she goes. “It took a long time for it to do it, but it’s dead. You’ve killed something,…

— Raymond Carver

There's literary creation and literary business. When I first got something accepted, it gave my life a validation it didn't otherwise have.

— Raymond Carver