Raymond Carver Quotes: 10

• Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read.

• I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. 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. I haven't been.

  Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

• Late FragmentAnd did you get whatyou wanted from this life, even so?I did.And what did you want?To call myself beloved, to feel myselfbeloved on the earth.

  A New Path to the Waterfall

• It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.

• I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.

  Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

• That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.

• But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window--maybe rearrange all the furniture.

  Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

• there isn't enough of anythingas long as we live. But at intervalsa sweetness appears and, given a chanceprevails.

  Ultramarine: Poems

• Happiness. It comes onunexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,any early morning talk about it.

• My circumstances of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction necessitated the short story form.