Quotes from Raymond Carver

He ran his fingers through my hair. He did it slowly, as if thinking about something else. He ran his fingers through my hair. He did it tenderly, as a lover would.

Hummingbird FOR TESS Suppose I say summer, write the word "hummingbird," put it in an envelope, take it down the hill to the box. When you open my letter you will recall those days and how much, just how much, I love you.

Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one.

Then i don't know I remembered how he was when he was nineteen, the way he looked, running across this field to where his dad sat on a tractor, hand over his eyes, watching Wes run toward him - Chef's House

I thought for a minute of the world outside my house, and then I didn't have any more thoughts except the thought that I had to hurry up and sleep.

Things change. I don't know how they do. But they do without your realizing it or wanting them to.

Es octubre, un día húmedo. Desde la ventana del hotel veo demasiadas cosas de esta ciudad del Medio Oeste. Veo cómo se encienden las luces de algunos edificios, veo cómo el humo de las altas chimeneas se alza en columnas espesas. Me gustaría no tener que mirar.

Two days ago, in the afternoon, Amanda said to me, I can't read books any more. Who has the time? It was the day after Oliver had left, and we were in this little café in the industrial part of the city. Who can concentrate any more? she said, stirring her coffee. Who reads? Do you read? (I shook my head.) Somebody must read, I guess. You see all these books around in store windows, and there are those clubs. Somebody's reading, she said. Who? I don't know anybody who reads.

When I look back on it, all of our important decisions have been figured out when we were drinking.

I thought we'd be like that too when we got old enough. Dignified. And in a place. And people would come to our door.

You tell me you didn't sleep well. I say I didn't either. You had a terrible night. "Me too." We're extraordinarily calm and tender with each other as if sensing the other's rickety state of mind. As if we knew what the other was feeling. We don't, of course. We never do. No matter. It's the tenderness I care about. That's the gift this morning that moves and holds me. Same as every morning.

Es eso lo que sucede cuando muere un amigo? ¿La mala suerte para los camaradas que deja atrás?

The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else.

You know what? I think if you were on fire right now, if you suddenly burst into flame this minute, I wouldn't throw a bucket of water on you.

So much water so close to home.

Now for the other life. The one without mistakes. – LOU LIPSITZ

What lasts is what you start with. – CHARLES WRIGHT from A Journal of Southern Rivers

You wouldn't do anything like that,' he said. 'You'll see,' I said.

All of us, all of us, all of us trying to save our immortal souls, some ways seemingly more round – about and mysterious than others. from "In Switzerland

And isn't the past inevitable, now that we call the little we remember of it "the past"? – WILLIAM MATTHEWS, from Flood

I'm saying that at the end of the summer she let the blind man run his hands over her face, said good-bye to him, married her childhood etc., who was now a commissioned officer, and she moved away from Seattle.

The nights are very unclear here. But if the moon is full, we know it. We feel one thing one minute, something else the next.

She's meeting herself coming and going.

Teníamos esa extraña sensación de que, ahora que nos dábamos cuenta de que ya había sucedido todo, podía suceder cualquier cosa.