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

“It was as Ginger's grandfather had said. It did not matter how far you go, you always take yourself with you.”
― Tom McNeal, quote from Far Far Away


“you can get past a mistake, but it's much harder to get past being a cruel person.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Thousand Words


“each hour is a room of shame, and I am
swimming, swimming, holding my head up,
smiling, joking, ashamed, ashamed,
like being naked with the clothed, or being
a child, having to try to behave
while hating the terms of your life.”
― Sharon Olds, quote from Stag's Leap: Poems


“One advantage of static factory methods is that, unlike constructors, they have names.”
― quote from Effective Java Programming Language Guide


“She steps back—she’s contemplating whether I will accept her explanation. But I know it will never be possible for her to acknowledge what she did, the same as it will never be possible for me to fully forget it:”
― Regina Calcaterra, quote from Etched in Sand: A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakable Childhood on Long Island


Interesting books

Holy Blood, Holy Grail
(10.6K)
Holy Blood, Holy Gra...
by Michael Baigent
Die Trying
(79.7K)
Die Trying
by Lee Child
The Memory of Earth
(14.1K)
The Memory of Earth
by Orson Scott Card
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
(23.1K)
Ella Minnow Pea: A N...
by Mark Dunn
Deadlocked
(85.3K)
Deadlocked
by Charlaine Harris
The Crow
(11.5K)
The Crow
by Alison Croggon

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.