carversite: raymond carver quotations

on raymond carver

Geoffrey Wolff (writer and friend)

He loved to hear stories. I never knew anyone who was a better audience.

Jay McInerney (writer, former student and friend)

...the recurring image I associate with Raymond Carver is one of people leaning toward him, working very hard at the act of listening. He mumbled.

Maryann Carver (first wife)

...his drinking habits changed when he started to teach... To be up in front of a class or group of people was terrifying for him. It was against his nature, though he became very good at it.

Sam Halpert (writer and friend)

He seemed to have a thing about doughnuts.

Tobias Wolff (writer and friend)

There's a poem of his called "Luck" about two boys at a house where a party is going on, and they get excited by the noise and the drinking. They go out and spend the night in the woods and come back the next morning and everyone's gone, the house is a shambles, and drinks are all around the house. The narrator, the poet, pours all the drinks together and says, "Friends, I thought this was living. A house where no one was home, and all I could drink". Notice the word "friends", the way he uses that word. With most writers, it would be an affectation, but it wasn't with him. That was his address to the world.

The Geoffrey Wolf, Maryann Carver, Sam Halpert and Tobias Wolff quotations are from Raymond Carver: An Oral Biography, by Sam Halpert, University Of Iowa Press, 1995. Copyright © 1995 by Sam Halpert. The Jay McInerney quotation is from "Raymond Carver, Mentor". Remembering Ray: A Composite Biography Of Raymond Carver, edited by William L Stull and Maureen P Carroll, Capra Press, 1993. Copyright © 1993 by William L Stull and Maureen P Carroll.