Quotes from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I'd like to know. I wish someone could tell me.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Something’s died in me,” she goes. “It took a long time for it to do it, but it’s dead. You’ve killed something, just like you’d took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“and it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“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, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“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, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“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, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, is that if something happened to one of us--excuse me for saying this--but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love we're talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don’t matter a damn anymore.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he'd say no, it wasn't the accident exactly but it was because he couldn't see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what was making him feel bad. Can you imagine? I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“The light was draining out of the room, going back through the window where it had come from.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else--the cold, and where he'd go in it--was outside, for a while anyway.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“But I guess even the knights were vessels to someone. Isn't that the way it worked? But then everyone is always a vessel to someone. Isn't that right, Terri? But what I liked about the knights, besides their ladies, was that they had that suit of armor, you know, and they couldn't get hurt very easily. No cars in those days, you know? No drunk teenagers to tear into your ass."

Vassals," Terri said.

What?" Mel said.

Vassals," Terri said. "They were called vassals.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. He'd said he'd spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go to medical school. He said he still looked back on those years in the seminary as the most important years of his life.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“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, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“But I guess even the knights were vessels to someone. Isn't that the way it worked? But then everyone is always a vessel to someone.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Iba a contaros algo -empezó Mel-. Bueno, iba a demostrar algo. Veréis: sucedió hace unos meses, pero sigue sucediendo en este mismo instante, y es algo que debería hacer que nos avergoncemos cuando hablamos como si supiéramos de qué hablamos cuando hablamos de amor.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Why don’t you kids dance? he decided to say, and then said it. "Why don’t you dance?”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“یک‌بار با توشیهیکو سکو، دونده‌ی المپیک، مصاحبه می‌کردم. تازه بازنشسته شده بود و او را مربی تیم "اس اند بی" کرده بودند. از او پرسیدم:‌«تا به حال پیش آمده دونده‌ای در سطح شما روزی نخواهد بدود و به جایش دوست داشته باشد در خانه بخوابد؟»‌‏
لحظاتی خیره نگاهم کرد و سپس با صدایی که از طنینش پیدا بود چه سوال احمقانه‌ای را باید جواب دهد، گفت: «مسلما. هرروز!»‌‏”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“A small wax and sawdust log burned on the grate. A carton of five more sat ready on the hearth. He got up from the sofa and put them all in the fireplace. He watched until they flamed. Then he finished his soda and made for the patio door. On the way, he saw the pies lined up on the sideboard. He stacked them in his arms, all six, one for every ten times she had ever betrayed him.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“He left through the patio door. He was not certain, but he thought he had proved something. He hoped he had made something clear. The thing was, they had to have a serious talk soon. There were things that needed talking about, important things that had to be discussed. They’d talk again. Maybe after the holidays were over and things got back to normal. He’d tell her the goddamn ashtray was a goddamn dish, for example.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“هیچ موضوعی غمگین تر از این نیست که کسی را عاشقانه ستایش کنی، ولی از این که او این عشق را به سخره بگیرد، بهراسی!
باید گفت، حتی اگر بی نتیجه باشد.
چرا که در آن حالت حداقل هر لحظه، تمام وجودت، ترسو بودنت را فریاد نخواهدزد و محکومت نخواهد کرد...”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Es octubre, un día húmedo. Desde la ventana del hotel veo demasiadas cosas de esta ciudad del Medio Oeste. Veo cómo se encienden las luces de algunos edificios, veo cómo el humo de las altas chimeneas se alza en columnas espesas. Me gustaría no tener que mirar.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“It's funny how we can be in love with someone one day, and the next we can easily fall in love with someone else.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Creo que en el amor no somos más que principiantes. Decimos”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Tuhaf bir şekilde her şey olabilecekken, her şeyin zaten olduğunu fark ettik.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Somerset Maugham hat einmal geschrieben, in jeder Rasur liegt eine Philosophie, und ich pflichte diesem Gedanken entschieden bei. Ganz gleich, wie banal und alltäglich eine Tätigkeit sein mag, wenn man sie nur lange genug ausübt, bekommt sie etwas Meditatives oder Kontemplatives.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

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