Raymond Carver citations

Page 2

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

“You see, this happened a few months ago, but it's still going on right now, and it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.”

“What good are insights? They only make things worse.”

“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’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.”

“Write what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?”

“I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.”

“What do any of us really know about love?”

“You're a beautiful drunk, daughter.
But you're a drunk.”

“When you live in the dark for so long, you begin to love it. And it loves you back, and isn’t that the point? You think, the face turns to the shadows, and just as well. It accepts, it heals, it allows. But it also devours.”

“Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different.”

“That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.”

“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. We are having a good time here. But hope all will be revealed soon.”

“We knew our days were numbered. We had fouled up our lives and we were getting ready for a shake-up.”

“I'm moving to Nevada. Either there or kill myself.”

“The light was draining out of the room, going back through the window where it had come from.”

“She won't give him back his look.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”