193 Quotes by Raymond Carver

Writers will be judged by what they write.

Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.

Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.

Remember Haydn's 104 symphonies. Not all of them were great. But there were 104 of them.

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.

I am too nervous to eat pie.

and did you get what you wanted from this life even so? i did.

A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don't matter a damn anymore.

You have to have been in love to write poetry.