Quotes from Cathedral

“You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do?”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“She won't give him back his look.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“They talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, and they did not think of leaving.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“In short, everything about his life was different for him at the bottom of that well.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“Close your eyes now,' the blind man said to me. I did it. I closed them just like he said.

'Are they closed?' he said. 'Don't fudge.'

'They're closed,' I said.

'Keep them that way,' he said. He said, 'Don't stop now. Draw.'

So we kept on with it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now.

Then he said, 'I think that's it. I think you got it,' he said. 'Take a look. What do you think?'

But I had my eyes closed. I thought I'd keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do.

'Well?" he said. 'Are you looking?'

My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything.

'It's really something,' I said.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“He seemed full of some goodness she didn't understand”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“Maybe once, maybe years ago, I was a different kind of human being. I've forgotten, I don't know for sure.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“In those olden days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“The men who began their life's work on [the cathedrals], they never lived to see the completion of their work.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“Los sueños son eso de lo que uno se despierta.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“Then i don't know I remembered how he was when he was nineteen, the way he looked, running across this field to where his dad sat on a tractor, hand over his eyes, watching Wes run toward him - Chef's House”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“I knocked stuff out of the medicine cabinet. Things rolled into the sink. ‘Where’s the aspirin?’ I said. I knocked down more things. I didn’t care. ‘Goddamn it,’ I said. Things kept falling.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“He was going somewhere, he knew that. And if it was the wrong direction, sooner or later he'd find it out.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn’t hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said.
Wes fixed his eyes on me. He said, Then I suppose we’d have to be somebody else if that was the case. Somebody we’re not. I don’t have that kind of supposing left in me. We were born who we are. Don’t you see what I’m saying?
I said I hadn’t thrown away a good thing and come six hundred miles to hear him talk like this.
He said, I’m sorry, but I can’t talk like somebody I’m not.
I’m not somebody else. If I was somebody else, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here. If I was somebody else, I wouldn’t be me.
But I’m who I am. Don’t you see?”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“. . . a boy and girl in love, burning with it.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“Something just like it happened to me once, something like what you're describing. Love. That's what it is.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“I’m saying that at the end of the summer she let the blind man run his hands over her face, said good-bye to him, married her childhood etc., who was now a commissioned officer, and she moved away from Seattle.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

“But he understood it was over, and he felt able to let her go. He was sure their life together had happened in the way he said it had. But it was something that had passed. And that passing--though it seemed impossible and he'd fought against it--would become part of him now, too, as surely as anything else he'd left behind.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.