Carver Quotes

“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

“After moving his family from Yakima to Paradise, California, in 1958, he enrolled at Chico State College. There, he began an apprenticeship under the soon-to-be-famous John Gardner, the first "real writer" he had ever met. "He offered me the key to his office," Carver recalled in his preface to Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (1983). "I see that gift now as a turning point." In addition, Gardner gave his student "close, line-by-line criticism" and taught him a set of values that was "not negotiable." Among these values were convictions that Carver held until his death. Like Gardner, whose On Moral Fiction (1978) decried the "nihilism" of postmodern formalism, Carver maintained that great literature is life-connected, life-affirming, and life-changing. "In the best fiction," he wrote "the central character, the hero or heroine, is also the ‘moved’ character, the one to whom something happens in the story that makes a difference. Something happens that changes the way that character looks at himself and hence the world." Through the 1960s and 1970s he steered wide of the metafictional "funhouse" erected by Barth, Barthelme and Company, concentrating instead on what he called "those basics of old-fashioned storytelling: plot, character, and action." Like Gardner and Chekhov, Carver declared himself a humanist. "Art is not self-expression," he insisted, "it’s communication.”
― William L. Stull

“I’m not bound by any God-ordained rules. I’m a rebel. I follow my own path.”
“Then follow it out into the marshes and drown yourself, why don’t you?”
“The marshes dried up” was Carver’s matter-of-fact answer.”
― Melika Dannese Lux, Deadmarsh Fey

“Their names would be entwined—Roman and Iris or Winnow and Kitt because could you truly have one without the other?—”
― Rebecca Ross, Letters of Enchantment

“As a panting Tracy Ferris scrambled into the life-pod, this thought was precisely what was running through her already agitated mind. From the very beginning of their association, she’d had a bad feeling about Brandon Carver. Something about that guy just never seemed to fit. Sure, he was good looking – but so were many of the other out of work space bums hitch-hiking from place to place she’d also had the misfortune to meet.”
― Christina Engela, Prodigal Sun

“Η γυναίκα μου εξαφανίστηκε παίρνοντας κι όλα τα ρούχα της μαζί.
Άφησε πίσω της δυο νάιλον κάλτσες και μια βούρτσα για τα μαλλιά που 'χε παραπέσει πίσω από το κρεβάτι.
Θα 'θελα τώρα να επιστήσω την προσοχή σας
σε τούτες τις καλοφτιαγμένες κάλτσες και στα δυνατά
σκούρα μαλλιά που είχαν πιαστεί στις τρίχες της βούρτσας.
Πέταξα τις κάλτσες στα σκουπίδια, τη βούρτσα
θα την κρατήσω και θα τη χρησιμοποιώ. Το κρεβάτι μόνο
μοιάζει αλλόκοτο και μου είναι αδύνατο να το δικαιολογήσω.”
― Raymond Carver, Δωμάτια όπου οι άνθρωποι ουρλιάζουν και πληγώνουν ο ένας τον άλλο