What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Quotes

“There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I'd like to know. I wish someone could tell me.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“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, just like you’d took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“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, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“All this, all of this love we're talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I'm wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don't know anything, and I'm the first one to admit it.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“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, that I’m no good anymore.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Drinking’s funny. When I look back on it, all of our important decisions have been figured out when we were drinking. Even when we talked about having to cut back on drinking, we’d be sitting at the kitchen table or out at the picnic table with a six-pack or whiskey.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, is that if something happened to one of us--excuse me for saying this--but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love we're talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone”
― Haruki Murakami, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don’t matter a damn anymore.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“The light was draining out of the room, going back through the window where it had come from.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“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, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he'd say no, it wasn't the accident exactly but it was because he couldn't see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what was making him feel bad. Can you imagine? I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“We opened our eyes and turned in bed to take a good look at each other. We both knew it then. We'd reached the end of something, and the thing was to find out where new to start.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“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

“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

“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.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“In addition to being in love, we like each other and enjoy one another's company.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Why don’t you kids dance? he decided to say, and then said it. "Why don’t you dance?”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Things change, he says. I don't know how they do. But they do without your realizing it or wanting them to.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“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, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“It's funny how we can be in love with someone one day, and the next we can easily fall in love with someone else.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“It seems to me we’re just beginners at love.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“He understood that it only took one lunatic and a torch to bring everything to ruin.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“There were things he wanted to say, grieving things, consoling things, things like that.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“All this, all of this love we’re talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Iba a contaros algo -empezó Mel-. Bueno, iba a demostrar algo. Veréis: sucedió hace unos meses, pero sigue sucediendo en este mismo instante, y es algo que debería hacer que nos avergoncemos cuando hablamos como si supiéramos de qué hablamos cuando hablamos de amor.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“I said I’m sorry.” “Sorry isn’t good enough.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“It seems to me we're just beginners at love. We say we love each other and we do, I don't doubt it. I love Terri and Terri loves me, and you guys love each other too. You know the kind of love I'm talking about now. Physical love, that impulse that drives you to someone special, as well as love of the other person's being, his or her essence, as it were. Carnal love and, well, call it sentimental love, the day-to-day caring about the other person. But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I must have loved my first wife too. But I did, I know I did. There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I'd like to know. I wish someone could tell me. You guys been together eighteen months and you love each other. It shows all over you. You glow with it. But you both loved other people before you met each other. You've both been married before, just like us. And you probably loved other people before that too, even. Terri and I have been together for five years, been married for four. And the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if something happened to one of us- excuse me for saying this- but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love we're talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I'm wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don't know anything, and I'm the first one to admit it.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love