Quotes from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

Raymond Carver ·  181 pages

Rating: (11.3K votes)


“He wondered if she wondered if he were watching her.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?


“Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?


“It is August.
My life is going to change. I feel it.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?


“I lifted him out. I held him. I held that half of him.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?


“You’ll be surprised to see what can collect in a mattress over the months, over the years. Every day, every night of our lives, we’re leaving little bits of ourselves, flakes of this and that, behind. Where do they go, these bits and pieces of ourselves? Right through the sheets and into the mattress, that’s where! Pillows, too. It’s all the same. He”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?



“You sound like a nice man,” the woman said. “Do I? Well, that’s nice of you to say.” He knew he should hang up now, but it was good to hear a voice, even his own, in the quiet room.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?


“Though he continued to take classes here and there in the sciences and in business, Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?


About the author

Raymond Carver
Born place: in Clatskanie, Oregon, The United States
Born date May 25, 1938
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“We walked in the door, and I was stunned by the sterile emptiness of the place. Most of the tiny living room was taken up by one of those giant strength-building home gyms you see on TV. In addition to that, there was one metal folding chair, an old wooden end table (being used as a coffee table, in front of the one chair), and a TV sitting on a milk crate. And it was the cleanest bachelor pad I had ever seen.
“Wow. Nice place. The prison cell motif is really working for you. Very feng shui.”
― Marie Sexton, quote from Promises


“Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from Alta


“That’s why they pay me the medium-sized bucks.”
― Karen Rose, quote from I Can See You


“An ideal world in my own home... I'm not yet sure why the prospect appalls me quite so much, but I do know somewhere in me that (he) is wrong, that a life without hatred is no life at all, that my children should be allowed to despise whom they like. Now there's a right worth fighting for...”
― Nick Hornby, quote from How to Be Good


“BECAUSE THIS MONEY came from Texas, the rise of Lyndon Johnson sheds light on the new economic forces that surged out of the Southwest in the middle of the twentieth century, on the immense influence exerted over America’s politics, its governmental institutions, its foreign and domestic policies by these forces: the oil and sulphur and gas and defense barons of the Southwest. As the robber barons of the last century looted the nation’s earth of its wealth—its coal and coke, its oil and ore, its iron, its forests, the very surface of its earth to provide a footing for the rails of their railroads—and used part of that wealth to ensure that the nation’s government would not force them to give more than a pittance of their loot back to the nation’s people, so the robber barons of this century have drained the earth of the Southwest of its riches and have used those riches to bend government to their ends.”
― Robert A. Caro, quote from The Path to Power


Interesting books

Passing
(14.1K)
Passing
by Nella Larsen
Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss
(11.4K)
Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy
(17.7K)
Love's Executioner a...
by Irvin D. Yalom
Lying on the Couch
(7.5K)
Lying on the Couch
by Irvin D. Yalom
Digging to America
(17.9K)
Digging to America
by Anne Tyler
Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays
(47K)
Barrel Fever: Storie...
by David Sedaris

About BookQuoters

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.