Quotes from Raymond Carver

I'd like to go out in the front yard and shout something. None of this is worth it! That's what I'd like people to hear.

There were things he wanted to say, grieving things, consoling things, things like that.

In those olden days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God.

In his better moments, Mr Baxter is a decent, ordinary guy — a guy you wouldn't mistake for anyone special. But he is special. In my book, he is. For one thing he has a full night's sleep behind him, and he's just embraced his wife before leaving for work. But even before he goes, he's already expected home a set number of hours later. True, in the grander scheme of things, his return will be an event of small moment — but an event nonetheless.

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.

La chose dont je parle ici a une parenté avec le style, mais ne se ramène pas au seul style. C'est la griffe particulière et reconnaissable entre toutes qu'un écrivain appose à tout ce qu'il écrit. Ce n'est pas le talent. Le talent, ça court les rues. Mais un écrivain qui a une façon spéciale de voir les choses et qui donne une forme artistique à cette manière de voir est un écrivain qui a des chances de durer.

I crack the other egg. Surely we have diminished one another.

A small wax and sawdust log burned on the grate. A carton of five more sat ready on the hearth. He got up from the sofa and put them all in the fireplace. He watched until they flamed. Then he finished his soda and made for the patio door. On the way, he saw the pies lined up on the sideboard. He stacked them in his arms, all six, one for every ten times she had ever betrayed him.

He left through the patio door. He was not certain, but he thought he had proved something. He hoped he had made something clear. The thing was, they had to have a serious talk soon. There were things that needed talking about, important things that had to be discussed. They'd talk again. Maybe after the holidays were over and things got back to normal. He'd tell her the goddamn ashtray was a goddamn dish, for example.

You'll be surprised to see what can collect in a mattress over the months, over the years. Every day, every night of our lives, we're leaving little bits of ourselves, flakes of this and that, behind. Where do they go, these bits and pieces of ourselves? Right through the sheets and into the mattress, that's where! Pillows, too. It's all the same. He

It made him feel older, having married friends.

He was reaching to light a cigarette with his last match when his hands began to tremble. The match went out, and he stood there holding the empty matchbook and the cigarette, staring at the vast expanse of trees at the end of the bright meadow. "Harry, we have to love each other," she said. "We'll just have to love each other," she said.

You sound like a nice man," the woman said. "Do I? Well, that's nice of you to say." He knew he should hang up now, but it was good to hear a voice, even his own, in the quiet room.

I don't want to talk to anybody. Actually, I'd talk to Molly, if I could, but I can't any longer — she's somebody else now. She isn't Molly any more. But — what can I say? — I'm somebody else, too.

It's seldom anything turns out to be better than you expected it to be. Usually it's the other way around.

I knocked stuff out of the medicine cabinet. Things rolled into the sink. 'Where's the aspirin?' I said. I knocked down more things. I didn't care. 'Goddamn it,' I said. Things kept falling.

It seems to me we're just beginners at love.

All this, all of this love we're talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory

a boy and girl in love, burning with it.

Though he continued to take classes here and there in the sciences and in business, Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came.

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." Uddrag fra: Raymond Carver. "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love". Apple Books.

The men who began their life's work on [the cathedrals], they never lived to see the completion of their work.

Los sueños son eso de lo que uno se despierta.

What's there to tell? The people over there embrace for a minute, and then they go inside the house together. They leave the light burning. Then they remember, and it goes out.