Raymond Carver Quotes

73 quotes in 917 categories

• There are significant moments in everyone's day that can make literature. That's what you ought to write about.
• Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.
• I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.
• Writers will be judged by what they write.
• Remember Haydn's 104 symphonies. Not all of them were great. But there were 104 of them.
• My life is going to change. I feel it.
• It's strange. You never start out life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief. Or a…
• A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.
• Write about what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?
• Art doesn't have to do anything. It just has to be there for the fierce pleasure we take in doing it.
• You're...writing for other writers to an extent-the dead writers whose work you admire, as well as the living writers you like to read.
• I dressed and went for a walk - determined not to return until I took in what Nature had to offer.
• You have to have been in love to write poetry.
• A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don't matter a damn anymore.
• There is no God, and conversation is a dying art.
• Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.
• Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. He'd said he'd spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go to medical…
• Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
• Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.
• I am too nervous to eat pie.

Browse Raymond Carver Quotes by Category