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?
“Regarding the need to pray, the anarch is again no different from anyone else. But he does not like to attach himself. He does not squander his best energies. He accepts no substitute for his gold. He knows his freedom, and also what it is worth its weight in. The equation balances when he is offered something credible. The result is ONE.
There can be no doubt that gods have appeared, not only in ancient times but even late in history; they feasted with us and fought at our sides. But what good is the splendor of bygone banquets to a starving man? What good is the clinking of gold that a poor man hears through the wall of time? The gods must be called.
The anarch lets all this be; he can bide his time. He has his ethos, but not morals. He recognizes lawfulness, but not the law; he despises rules. Whenever ethos goes into shalts and shalt-nots, it is already corrupted. Still, it can harmonize with them, depending on location and circumstances, briefly or at length, just as I harmonize here with the tyrant for as long as I like.
One error of the anarchists is their belief that human nature is intrinsically good. They thereby castrate society, just as the theologians ("God is goodness") castrate the Good Lord.”
― Ernst Jünger, quote from Eumeswil
“I will protect you all the days of my life. You will be the mother of all who live and the giver of life to the seed spoken by the One -- the seed that will strike the offspring of the serpent. The One has said it, Isha...today I name you Havah, because you will live, and all who live will come from you, and you will give birth to hope.”
― Tosca Lee, quote from Havah: The Story of Eve
“He smacked the heel of his hand against his forhead, as if that could knock the mental picture out of his head. Hell, he though irritably, he didn't want to knock the image just out of his head. He wanted to send it clear across the room and out the window.”
― Julia Quinn, quote from Brighter Than the Sun
“She was not so swept away that she could not see the high comedy of this spiritual seduction: a Litvinoff daughter, a third-generation atheist, an enemy of all forms of magical thinking, wandering into synagogue one day and finding her inner Jew. But there it was. Something had happened to her, something she could not ignore or deny. And there was a sense in which its unlikelihood, its horrible inconvenience, was precisely what made it so compelling.”
― Zoë Heller, quote from The Believers
“If you follow love, you can't go wrong, even if it leads to disaster. Trust it."
Raphael to Lucifer”
― Jeri Smith-Ready, quote from Requiem for the Devil
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