Top 100 Carver Quotes
#1. How useful Mr. Carver's Esperanto would be, she thought. (Only if everyone spoke it, of course.)
Kate Atkinson
#2. I dub thee Toadsticker," I said. "Slayer of miscreants, opener of packages, occasional carver of baked turkeys. Let all men hear, and know mild caution." I swear the steel flickered.
Frank Tuttle
#3. My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.
Zadie Smith
#4. Carver's best book yet! FROM A CHANGELING STAR combines deft characterization and fascinating extrapolation into a complex, compulsively readable thriller. I wish all science fiction novels could be this good.
Craig Shaw Gardner
#5. The college was run by a man called Mr. Carver whose lifelong passions were Esperanto and Pitman's shorthand, the latter more useful than the former.
Kate Atkinson
#6. Raymond Carver is good. I think he'll be appreciated more and more. He's an easy writer to imitate.
Leslie Fiedler
#7. You knew I would find you and you knew what I'd do when I did." -Cort (The Carver's Problem)
B.L. Brooklyn
#8. My dad read, I think, the Perry Mason mysteries and Zane Grey and some humor compendiums ... And then at one point, the bookmobile started coming to town. That was really cool. I mean, that was when I read my first Raymond Carver story. I think that was probably 1969 or so. I must have been 13.
Tom Drury
#9. Besides, if I'd decided to pull Carver's spine out of his body, I would've done it already."
"Can you actually do that?"
Curran frowned. "I don't know. I mean theoretically if you broke the spine above the pelvis, you could, but then there are ribs ... I'll have to try it sometime.
Ilona Andrews
#10. Island Records used what we built and tried to cash in on it which is so annoying. So it came time to do Carver City record and Island wanted to do it and we're just like "What's the point?" I mean, at that point they were even admitting like, "Yeah, we're just gonna do what we've always done."
Jess Margera
#11. Black people have been qualified to be president for hundreds of years. George Washington Carver could have been president. I could go on with a list of black men that were qualified to be the president of the United States. So the Obama victory is progress for white people.
Chris Rock
#12. Beth is the kind of girl you want to stuff into a trunk, wrapped in plastic" - Shane Carver (Quote from: The Carver's Magic)
B.L. Brooklyn
#13. George Washington Carver explained, "Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough." Mindfulness is this kind
Jack Kornfield
#14. . . . though if Fanshawe had not spoken in so unbecoming a way, Laurence would have liked to keep Carver out of it, as he knew the boy had a poor head for heights, which struck him as a grave impediment for an aviator.
Naomi Novik
#15. Beauties" by Anton Chekhov, "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J. D. Salinger, "Brownies" or "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" both by ZZ Packer, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" by Amy Hempel, "Fat" by Raymond Carver, "Indian Camp
Gabrielle Zevin
#16. We're doing Circle of Snakes, we open up with Skin Carver and we are throwing in Skull Forest later on.
Glenn Danzig
#17. From a literary standpoint, I've been loving Raymond Carver's short stories, William Carlos Williams' poems, Richard Siken's 'Crush', John Fante, and Jim Harrison's book of ghazals. I love film and photography too, so many of my songs are very image rich from those influences.
Greta Salpeter
#18. Plain Kate, Kate the Carver
No one's friend and no one's daughter
Little Kate might meet her fate
Whittling sticks till it's too late
Erin Bow
#19. Brit had wanted it to say LOVED. Those were the directions she gave me for the granite carver. But at the last minute I changed it. I was never going to stop, so why make it past tense? I
Jodi Picoult
#21. John Dos Passos, Raymond Carver, Flaubert and William Maxwell were all very influential when I first started writing. Now, the writers I'm most interested in are the writers who are most unlike me: for example, Denis Johnson.
Jonathan Dee
#22. Carver is a charming man with a soft voice that makes you believe he is always confiding in you. He is courteous and attentive, which I wonder about, because is this his natural disposition, or has he read too many novels about Hannibal Lecter?
Karin Slaughter
#23. What!" Schiffer blurted, not a question. Lucas had been watching Carver and Dannon again, and again, their eyes were blank; if they'd been lizards, Lucas thought, a nictitating membrane might have dropped slowly across them.
John Sandford
#24. I have a treasured set of matched grain crosscut horns made for me by master American carver Jim Cooke, cut yin-yang from the same block of briar he waited five years to find.
Rick Newcombe
#25. In our community here in Boston, we have had a tremendous influx of Russian Jews and Haitians. We call these people immigrants. But they come for the same reasons that William Bradford and William Brewster and John Carver came.
Kathryn Lasky
#26. The library of my elementary school had this great biography section, and I read all of these paperback biographies until they were dog-eared. The story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Curie and Martin Luther King and George Washington Carver and on and on and on.
Christine Quinn
#27. The greatest carver does the least cutting. LAO-TZU
Phil Jackson
#28. The problem with relegating black history to one really short month, the shortest month, is not only are we telling the same stories over and over again - which are amazing, George Washington Carver is incredible, there's nobody like Frederick Douglass - but there are so many.
Karyn Parsons
#29. I did not have to learn to love you: You were chosen for me. I knew that the first time I saw you.
- George Washington Carver
Marilyn Nelson
#30. Jeffrey Carver imagines wonders and allows us to share his vision.
Terry Carr
#31. All over the world great writers were dying young: Italo Calvino, Raymond Carver, and now here was Angela wrestling with the Reaper. A fatwa was not the only way to die. There were older types of death sentence that still worked very well.
Salman Rushdie
#32. Let's be real. Like I would date someone who didn't go out of their way to be my nemesis." - Shane Carver (The Carver's Magic)
B.L. Brooklyn
#33. I love fiction. I like reading short stories. Cupcakes, pop songs, Polaroids, and short stories. They all raise and answer questions in a short space. I like Lorrie Moore. Amy Hempel. Tim O'Brien. Raymond Carver. All the heartbreakers.
Laurel Nakadate
#34. The fierce ambitions of Carver Dana Andrews, son of a Baptist preacher, might well have been imagined by Horatio Alger, Jr.
or Samuel Goldwyn
but not the hidden costs behind those achievements. Carl Rollyson compassionately captures the man behind the movie star.
Marion Meade
#35. Dannon brought the .22 up and shot him in the temple. Carver's head bounced off the side window and Dannon shot him again, the .22 shots deafening inside the truck, but hardly audible outside. Carver slumped, his face not even looking surprised.
John Sandford
#36. I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?
John Ruskin
#37. I am really into how words sound out loud, so I was always the kid who would, like, read the page of the book to herself in her room over and over and over. And Raymond Carver is great for that. Tobias Wolff is an author who is really good for that as well.
Lorde
#38. Sons of Ares ARES Terrorist Leader, color unknown DANCER Ares' lieutenant, a Red HARMONY Dancer's lieutenant, a Red MICKEY Carver, a Violet EVEY former slave of Mickey, a Pink
Pierce Brown
#39. I don't know much about him. He is a carver in our bishop's city, a days journey from here; he has a great reputation as an artist. Artists usually are no saints, he's probably no saint either, but he certainly is a gifted, high-minded man.
Hermann Hesse
#40. Just about killed ourselves out there in the dark," Carver said. "He's gone. Put a few concrete blocks on top of him, just in case." "In case of what?" Taryn asked, fascinated in spite of herself. "Well . . . body gases," Carver said. "The ground was a little wet, you wouldn't want him popping up.
John Sandford
#41. It's not a terribly original thing to say, but I love Raymond Carver. For one thing, he's fun to read out loud.
Ira Glass
#42. She talks big, but she's made of custard." "Fluffy and full of cream?" Kato wiggles blond eyebrows at me. Carver grins. "Think she's sweet, too?" My eyes spit fire. "Bite me. You'll find out.
Amanda Bouchet
#43. So as near as I could tell the end of the world began roughly about the time that Billy Carver's butt rang about halfway through the War of 1812.
Steve Vernon
#44. I know you, Ruth Ann Carver. I know you better than you know yourself. You think you do things right. You think you're a paragon of right living. This is a self-told lie, one bolstered by your coddling parents and grandparents.
Carolyn Lee Adams
#45. Carver was truculent: "What's a good part of it?
John Sandford
#46. I read a lot of short fiction, like Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Carver and Wells Tower.
Lorde
#47. Hummingbird Suppose I say summer, write the word "hummingbird," put it in an envelope, take it down the hill to the box. When you open my letter you will recall those days and how much, just how much, I love you. - RAYMOND CARVER
Catherine McKenzie
#48. With the Cauldron, you could do other things than raise the dead. You could destroy the wall.
Sarah J. Maas
#49. My heart is broken," she goes. "It's turned to a piece of stone. I'm no good. That's what's as bad as anything, that I'm no good anymore.
Raymond Carver
#51. Young people, I want to beg of you always keep your eyes open to what Mother Nature has to teach you. By so doing you will learn many valuable things every day of your life.
George Washington Carver
#52. Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep. In the still dark hours before sunrise God tells me of the plans I am to fulfill.
George Washington Carver
#53. The smooth stones you pick up and examine under the moon's light have been made blue from the sea. Next morning when you pull them from your trouser pocket, they are still blue.
Raymond Carver
#54. The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.
Raymond Carver
#56. I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.
Raymond Carver
#57. He wondered if she wondered if he were watching her.
Raymond Carver
#58. We opened our eyes and turned in bed to take a good look at each other. We both knew it then. We'd reached the end of something, and the thing was to find out where new to start.
Raymond Carver
#59. I'm moving to Nevada. Either there or kill myself.
Raymond Carver
#60. When I was young, I said to God, 'God, tell me the mystery of the universe.' But God answered, 'That knowledge is for me alone.' So I said, 'God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.' Then God said, 'Well George, that's more nearly your size.' And he told me.
George Washington Carver
#61. My latter schooldays and my university days were during the war, when science - physics, in particular - was a very important and glamorous subject. A lot of us felt that if we couldn't get into science, we might try engineering or medicine.
John Henry Carver
#62. Our creator is the same and never changes despite the names given Him by people here and in all parts of the world. Even if we gave Him no name at all, He would still be there, within us, waiting to give us good on this earth.
George Washington Carver
#63. We knew our days were numbered. We had fouled up our lives and we were getting ready for a shake-up.
Raymond Carver
#64. Believe. The promise of God are real. They are as real, as solid, yes infinitely more solid than this table which the materialist so thoroughly believes in. If you would only believe, O ye of little faith.
George Washington Carver
#65. It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things - a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring - with immense, even startling power.
Raymond Carver
#66. All flowers talk to me and so do hundreds of little living things in the woods. I learn what I know by watching and loving everything.
George Washington Carver
#67. Most people search high and wide for the key to success. If they only knew, the key to their dreams lies within.
George Washington Carver
#68. 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.
Raymond Carver
#69. It's strange. You never start out life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief. Or a liar.
Raymond Carver
#70. I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.
Raymond Carver
#71. 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.
Raymond Carver
#73. I think a lot of our team commitment is a silent understanding that each one of us has poured our life into what we're doing.
Claire Carver-Dias
#74. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he was evil.
Edmund Carver
#75. I've done as many as 20 or 30 drafts of a story. Never less than 10 or 12 drafts.
Raymond Carver
#76. Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater. Keep your thoughts free from hate, and you need have no fear from those who hate you.
George Washington Carver
#77. All my life I have risen regularly at four o'clock and have gone into the woods and talked to God. There He gives me my orders for the day.
George Washington Carver
#78. But here is the thing. When he gets on me, I suddenly feel I am fat. I feel am terrifically fat, so fat that Rudy is a tiny thing and hardly there at all.
Raymond Carver
#79. Booze takes a lot of time and effort if you're going to do a good job with it.
Raymond Carver
#80. Whatever doesn't kill you makes a great story.
Mark Carver
#81. The need for justice grows out of the conflict of human interests. That is to say, if there were no conflict of interests among mankind we should never have invented the word justice, nor conceived the idea for which it stands.
Thomas Nixon Carver
#82. When you're writing fiction or poetry ... it really comes down to this: indifference to everything except what you're doing ... A young writer could do worse than follow the advice given in those lines.
Raymond Carver
#84. Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that.
Raymond Carver
#86. Well understand this! If you want to join our sales team; I don't need pillion riders; I need high drivers who grasp the handle-bars.
Martin Carver
#87. What's there to tell? The people over there embrace for a minute, and then they go inside the house together. They leave the light burning. Then they remember, and it goes out.
Raymond Carver
#89. So in fact, narrowing down our choices means less overwhelm, and more creativity.
Courtney Carver
#90. 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.
Raymond Carver
#91. Maybe once, maybe years ago, I was a different kind of human being. I've forgotten, I don't know for sure.
Raymond Carver
#93. Remember Haydn's 104 symphonies. Not all of them were great. But there were 104 of them.
Raymond Carver
#94. There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do?
Raymond Carver
#95. It is August.
My life is going to change. I feel it.
Raymond Carver
#96. *Always schedule enough time between connections. I always like to give myself at least two hours between flights. It's much easier to sit in the terminal for three hours than it is to sit on standby for two days because you missed your connection.
Morgan Carver Richards
#97. I thought for a minute of the world outside my house, and then I didn't have any more thoughts except the thought that I had to hurry up and sleep.
Raymond Carver
#98. 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.
Raymond Carver
#99. You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk.
Raymond Carver
#100. It's something that I feel I know about, relationships between men and women. I like to write from the woman's point of view now and again, to get inside her head, to feel what she's feeling.
Raymond Carver
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
