"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

"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

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

"Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on."
— Raymond Carver

"Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from."
— Raymond Carver

"Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read. "
— Raymond Carver

"Booze takes a lot of time and effort if you're going to do a good job with it."
— Raymond Carver (Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories)

"I hate tricks. At the first sign of a trick or gimmick in a piece of fiction, a cheap trick or even an elaborate trick, I tend to look for cover. Tricks are ultimately boring, and I get bored easily, which may go along with my not having much of an attention span. But extremely clever chi-chi writing, or just plain tomfoolery writing, puts me to sleep. Writers don't need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing- a sunset or an old shoe- in absolute and simple amazement."
— Raymond Carver (Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories)

"That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window."
— Raymond Carver

"But he stays by the window, remembering that life. 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 (Distance and other stories)

""I am too nervous to eat pie.""
— 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 (Ultramarine: Poems)

"A 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 (A New Path to the Waterfall)

"It's possible, in a poem or 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 power."
— Raymond Carver

"Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications."
— Raymond Carver

"What good are insights? They only make things worse."
— Raymond Carver

"That was in Crescent City, California, up near the Oregon border. I left soon after. But today I was thinking of that place, of Crescent City, and of how I was trying out a new life there with my wife, and how, in the barber's chair that morning, I had made up my mind to go. I was thinking today about the calm I felt when I closed my eyes and let the barber's fingers move through my hair, the sweetness of those fingers, the hair already starting to grow."
— Raymond Carver (Where I'm Calling from: New and Selected Stories)

"Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read. "
— Raymond Carver

"Weeks later, she said: 'The guy was about middle-aged. All his things right there in his yard. No lie. We got real pissed and danced. In the driveway. Oh, my God. Don't laugh. He played us these records. Look at this record-player. The old guy gave it to us. And all these crappy records. Will you look at this shit?'

She kept talking. She told everyone. There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time, she quit trying"
— Raymond Carver

""But I guess even the knights were vessels to someone. Isn't that the way it worked? But then everyone is always a vessel to someone. Isn't that right, Terri? But what I liked about the knights, besides their ladies, was that they had that suit of armor, you know, and they couldn't get hurt very easily. No cars in those days, you know? No drunk teenagers to tear into your ass."

"Vassals," Terri said.

"What?" Mel said.

"Vassals," Terri said. "They were called vassals.""
— Raymond Carver (What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories)

"Hay en el alma un deseo de no pensar. De estar quieto. Emparejado con éste, un deseo de ser estricto, sí, y riguroso. Pero el alma también es una afable hija de puta no siempre de fiar.
"
— 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 go to medical school. He said he still looked back on those years in the seminary as the most important years of his life."
— Raymond Carver (What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories)

"My circumstances of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction necessitated the short story form."
— Raymond Carver

"life was a stone cutting and grinding..."
— Raymond Carver (All of Us: The Collected Poems)

"And did you get what you wanted from this life?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on earth."
— 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 this earth."
— Raymond Carver

"They’re all termites
Maybe it’s ego I don’t read much anymore
But these people who build
reputations on five or six books
Termites
Bukowski she says
Why do you listen to classical music all day
Can’t you hear her saying that
Bukowski why do you listen to classical music all day
That surprises you doesn’t it
You wouldn’t think a crude bastard like me
could listen to classical music all day
Brahms Rachmaninoff Bartok Telemann"
— Raymond Carver

"and did you get what you wanted from this life even so? i did."
— Raymond Carver