Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go … - Raymond Carver

Same topic Authors

Quote of the day

Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break And peace of pardon win! How else may man make straight his plan And cleanse his soul from Sin? How else but through a broken heart May Lord Christ enter in?

Raymond Carver

Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.

Face, Life And Death, Question, Rising, Water, World

Same Author Quotes

there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.

Appears, Chance, Enough, Long, Prevails

And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

Beloved, Call, Earth, I Love You, Want

If we're lucky, writer and reader alike, we'll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we'll ponder what we've just written or read; maybe our hearts or intellects will have been moved off the peg just a little from where they were before. Our body temperature will have gone up, or down, by a degree. Then, breathing evenly and steadily once more, we'll collect ourselves, writers and readers alike, get up, "created of warm blood and nerves" as a Chekhov character puts it, and go on to the next thing: Life. Always life.

Body, Character, Chekhov, Heart, Hearts, Writing

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

Ones, Right, Words, Writing

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.

Immense, Insightful, Possible, Stories, Using, Writing