Quotessence
Home / Topics / Carver Quotes

Carver Quotes

Browse 38 quotes about Carver.

Carver Quotes

“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.”

MindFitFeelingAssociationTheWhatOfThatAboutLookingHeMeetTheirSureWasAsCarverAlreadyHadIntoAgitatedPreciselyHitch HikingLife Pod
Book:Prodigal Sun
Create image

“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.”

WritingParadiseBiographyChekhovCarverRaymond CarverJohn GardnerChico State
Author:William L. Stull
Create image

“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.”

Carver
Book:Δωμάτια όπου οι άνθρωποι ουρλιάζουν και πληγώνουν ο ένας τον άλλο
Create image

“That became my aesthetic - a very Chekhovian, American realist aesthetic in the tradition of Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Tobias Wolff. The perfectible, realist story that had these somewhat articulate characters, a lot of silence, a lot of obscured suffering, a lot of manliness, a lot of drinking, a lot of divorces. As my writing went on, I shed a lot of those elements.”

WritingCharacterStoriesSufferingSilenceElementsTraditionDrinkingDivorceAestheticShedRealistTobiasManlinessCarver
Author:Jess Row
Create image

“I am indebted to anyone who has ever written anything. I am indebted to the unknown carver of pictograms on a gallery of stone panels, which I encountered and stood in silence before on top of a distant odd-shaped hill in northern Kenya. For whatever reason the muses have most unexpectedly invited me to join this immense procession. I am humbled and delighted.”

ReasonSilenceWrittenStonesHillsOddImmenseMuseSilence IsInvitedDelightedGalleryKenyaIndebtedProcessionCarver
Author:Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Create image

“I'm interested in dismantling the distinction between masculine and feminine writing both because I think it's a false distinction and, I think, ultimately an insulting one. It's as insulting to men as it is to women. I'm not sure what masculine writing would look like - I assume some combination of Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver. Writing can't be gendered in that way.”

ThinkingMenWritingAssumingNot SureFeminineMasculineInsultingCarver
Author:Katie Kitamura
Create image

“Alex decided he’d had enough. He put down his knife. “All right,” he said. “You’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t want to work with me. Well, that’s fine. Because I don’t want to work with you either. And for what it’s worth, nobody would ever believe you were my mom because no mom would ever behave like you.” “Alex…,” Carver began. “Forget it! I’m going back to London. And if you’re Mr. Byrne asks why, you can tell him I didn’t like the jelly, so I went home to get some jam.”

IfsWantBelieveWellsMadeSaidEnoughHomeAsksForgetClearLike YouFineMomDecidedMy MomLondonMade ItBehaveKnivesForget ItJamAlexHad EnoughJellyCarver
Author:Anthony Horowitz
Create image

“Those who work standing ... carpenters, sawyers, carvers, blacksmiths, masons ... are liable to varicose veins ... [because] the strain on the muscles is such that the circulation of the blood is retarded. Standing even for a short time proves exhausting compared with walking and running though it be for a long time ... Nature delights and is restored by alternating and varied actions.”

LongRunningActionScienceBloodHealthWalkingExerciseProveLong TimeStandingDelightMusclesVeinsStrainExhaustingLiableShort TimeCirculationCarpenterRetardedMasonsSawyerCarverBlacksmiths
Author:Bernardino Ramazzini
Create image

“When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner's pick, a wood carver's gouge, a surgeon's probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year.”

KnowsWritingYearsRealEndsNextLinesPathSubjectsTomorrowPicksLaysWoodsFinding YourselfTerritoryNext YearSurgeonsDead EndsMinersNew TerritoryCarver
Book:The Writing Life
Create image

“The wood-carver can fashion whatever he will. Yet his products are but toys of the moment, to be glanced at in jest, not fashioned according to any precept or law. When times change, the carver too will change his style and make new trifles to hit the fancy of the passing day. But there is another kind of artist, who sets more soberly about his work, striving to give real beauty to the things which men actually use and to give to them the shape which tradition has ordained. This maker of real things must not for a moment be confused with the maker of idle toys.”

MenGivingKindRealMomentsUseLawArtistFashionStyleProductsShapesTraditionStriveWoodsPassingPassingsConfusedFancyMakersToysIdleReal ThingsTriflesJestReal BeautyCarver
Book:The Tale of Genji
Create image

“Jeff Carver is a hard sf writer who gets it right-his science and his people are equally convincing. NEPTUNE CROSSING combines his strengths, from a chilling look at alien machine intelligence, to cutting-edge chaos theory, to the pangs of finite humans in the face of the infinite. If you like intriguing ideas delivered in an exciting plot, this is your meat.”

PeopleIfsHumansLooksIdeasHardFacesCuttingTheoryMachinesExcitingInfiniteChaosEdgesAliensMeatPlotFiniteChillConvincingCrossingsIntriguingCutting EdgeNeptuneChaos TheoryCarver
Author:Gregory Benford
Create image

“Jane Francklyne, born in 1565, had lived for less than a month. She left very little behind. She was buried in the Ecton churchyard, but her father would hardly have paid a carver to engrave so small a stone. If not for the parish register, there would be no record that this Jane Francklyne had ever lived at all. History is what is written and can be found; what isn't saved is lost, sunken and rotted, eaten by the earth.”

IfsLittlesWould BeEarthFoundFatherLostLeftBornBehindsRecordsWrittenMonthsStonesPaidSavedBuriedJaneRegisterParishCarverEngrave
Book:Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin
Create image

“Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, The sailing pine,the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, The builder oak, sole king of forests all, The aspin good for staves, the cypress funeral, The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage, the fir that weepest still, The yew obedient to the bender's will, The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill, The myrrh sweet-bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, The fruitful olive, and the platane round, The carver holm, the maple seldom inward sound.”

StillsSoundTreePoetSweetProudKingsPraiseRoundsIllWoundsForestsBitterDryTallFuneralSoleAshesInwardSailingSageBleedingObedientOaksMillsPropsConquerorVinesBuilderOlivesLaurelsMapleCedarsCypressesCarverTall TreesYew
Author:Edmund Spenser
Create image

“I am a cutter, you see. Also a snipper, a slicer, a carver, a jabber. I am a very special case. I have a purpose. My skin, you see, screams. It's covered with words - cook, cupcake, kitty, curls - as if a knife-wielding first-grader learned to write on my flesh. I sometimes, but only sometimes, laugh. Getting out of the bath and seeing, out of the corner of my eye, down the side of a leg: baby-doll. Pulling on a sweater, and in a flash of my wrist: harmful. Why these words?”

IfsWritingFirstsSometimesEyePurposeSidesCasesLaughingSeeingSpecialBabySkinsCornersLegsFleshCooksInjuryCoveredKnivesScreamFlashPullingBathsDollsWristsCurlsSweatersKittiesCupcakesSelf InjuryCuttersCarver
Book:The Novels of Gillian Flynn: Sharp Objects, Dark Places
Create image

“A parable: A man was examining the construction of a cathedral. He asked a stone mason what he was doing chipping the stones, and the mason replied, "I am making stones." He asked a stone carver what he was doing. "I am carving a gargoyle." And so it went, each person said in detail what they were doing. Finally he came to an old woman who was sweeping the ground. She said. "I am helping build a cathedral." ...Most of the time each person is immersed in the details of one special part of the whole and does not think of how what they are doing relates to the larger picture.”

ThinkingMenPersonsDoeSaidWholeHelpingScienceSpecialEvidenceStonesDetailsRelateConstructionOld WomanCathedralsExaminingSweepingParablesMasonsCarvingGargoylesCarver
Author:Richard Hamming
Create image