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I Am A Cigarette With A Body Attached To It

-Raymond Carver

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I Am A Cigarette

Raymond Carver

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I Am A Cigarette With A Body Attached To It

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More From Raymond Carver

If We're Lucky, Writer And Reader Alike, We'll Finish The Last Line Or Two Of A Short Story And Then Just Sit For A Minute, Quietly. Ideally, We'll Ponder What We've Just Written Or Read; Maybe Our Hearts Or Intellects Will Have Been Moved Off The Peg Just A Little From Where They Were Before. Our Body Temperature Will Have Gone Up, Or Down, By A Degree. Then, Breathing Evenly And Steadily Once More, We'll Collect Ourselves, Writers And Readers Alike, Get Up, "created Of Warm Blood And Nerves" As A Chekhov Character Puts It, And Go On To The Next Thing: Life. Always Life.

Booze Takes A Lot Of Time And Effort If You're Going To Do A Good Job With It.

Write About What You Know, And What Do You Know Better Than Your Own Secrets?

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.

Remember Haydn's 104 Symphonies. Not All Of Them Were Great. But There Were 104 Of Them.

Woke Up This Morning With A Terrific Urge To Lie In Bed All Day And Read.

I'm Always Learning Something. Learning Never Ends.

Always Learning

There Are Significant Moments In Everyone's Day That Can Make Literature. That's What You Ought To Write About.

I Could Hear My Heart Beating. I Could Hear Everyone's Heart. I Could Hear The Human Noise We Sat There Making, Not One Of Us Moving, Not Even When The Room Went Dark.

Anyone Can Express Himself Or Herself, But What Writers And Poets Want To Do In Their Work, More Than Simply Express Themselves, Is Communicate.

I Guess My Writing Has Changed As My Life Has.

Art Doesn't Have To Do Anything. It Just Has To Be There For The Fierce Pleasure We Take In Doing It.

But I Can Hardly Sit Still. I Keep Fidgeting, Crossing One Leg And Then The Other. I Feel Like I Could Throw Off Sparks, Or Break A Window--maybe Rearrange All The Furniture.

Don’t Complain, Don’t Explain.

My Life Is Going To Change. I Feel It.

There's Literary Creation And Literary Business. When I First Got Something Accepted, It Gave My Life A Validation It Didn't Otherwise Have.

Nights Without Beginning That Had No End. Talking About A Past As If It'd Really Happened. Telling Themselves That This Time Next Year, This Time Next Year, Things Were Going To Be Different.

Honey, No Offense, But Sometimes I Think I Could Shoot You And Watch You Kick.

You Have To Have Been In Love To Write Poetry.

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.

We Knew Our Days Were Numbered. We Had Fouled Up Our Lives And We Were Getting Ready For A Shake-up.

There Isn't Enough Of Anything As Long As We Live. But At Intervals A Sweetness Appears And, Given A Chance Prevails.

You're A Beautiful Drunk, Daughter. But You're A Drunk.

When A Reader Finishes A Wonderful Story And Lays It Aside, He Should Have To Pause For A Minute And Collect Himself.

That Morning She Pours Teacher's Over My Belly And Licks It Off. That Afternoon She Tries To Jump Out The Window.

You've Got To Work With Your Mistakes Until They Look Intended. Understand?

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.

What Good Are Insights? They Only Make Things Worse.

I Think A Little Menace Is Fine To Have In A Story. For One Thing, It's Good For The Circulation.

The Smooth Stones You Pick Up And Examine Under The Moon's Light Have Been Made Blue From The Sea. Next Morning When You Pull Them From Your Trouser Pocket, They Are Still Blue.

I’d Like To Go Out In The Front Yard And Shout Something. “none Of This Is Worth It!” That’s What I’d Like People To Hear.

I've Done As Many As 20 Or 30 Drafts Of A Story. Never Less Than 10 Or 12 Drafts.

It's Possible, In A Poem Or Short Story, To Write About Commonplace Things And Objects Using Commonplace But Precise Language, And To Endow Those Things—a Chair, A Window Curtain, A Fork, A Stone, A Woman's Earring—with Immense, Even Startling Power.

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.

The Fiction Im Most Interested In Has Lines Of Reference To The Real World.

I'm Moving To Nevada. Either There Or Kill Myself.

Life And Death Matters, Yes. And The Question Of How To Behave In This World, How To Go In The Face Of Everything. Time Is Short And The Water Is Rising.

A Great Danger, Or At Least A Great Temptation, For Many Writers Is To Become Too Autobiographical In Their Approach To Their Fiction. A Little Autobiography And A Lot Of Imagination Are Best.

I Loved You So Much Once. I Did. More Than Anything In The Whole Wide World. Imagine That. What A Laugh That Is Now. Can You Believe It? We Were So Intimate Once Upon A Time I Can't Believe It Now. The Memory Of Being That Intimate With Somebody. We Were So Intimate I Could Puke. I Can't Imagine Ever Being That Intimate With Somebody Else. I Haven't Been.

I Am Too Nervous To Eat Pie.

She Won't Give Him Back His Look.

My Circumstances Of Unrelieved Responsibility And Permanent Distraction Necessitated The Short Story Form.

There Is No Answer. It's Okay. But Even If It Wasn't Okay, What Am I Supposed To Do?

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.

Dreams, You Know, Are What You Wake Up From.

Every Great Or Even Every Very Good Writer Makes The World Over According To His Own Specifications.

In The Beginning, When I Was Trying To Write, I Couldnt Turn Off The Outside World To The Extent That I Can Now.

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.

There Was This Funny Thing Of Anything Could Happen Now That We Realized Everything Had.

And Did You Get What You Wanted From This Life Even So? I Did.

Isak Dinesen Said That She Wrote A Little Every Day, Without Hope And Without Despair. I Like That.

It's Strange. You Never Start Out Life With The Intention Of Becoming A Bankrupt Or An Alcoholic Or A Cheat And A Thief. Or A Liar.

Woke Up This Morning With A Terrific Urge To Lie In Bed All Day And Read. Fought Against It For A Minute. Then Looked Out The Window At The Rain. And Gave Over. Put Myself Entirely In The Keep Of This Rainy Morning. Would I Live My Life Over Again? Make The Same Unforgivable Mistakes? Yes, Given Half A Chance. Yes.

The Places Where Water Comes Together With Other Water. Those Places Stand Out In My Mind Like Holy Places.

That's All We Have, Finally, The Words, And They Had Better Be The Right Ones.

Happiness. It Comes On Unexpectedly. And Goes Beyond, Really, Any Early Morning Talk About It.

I've Crossed Some Kind Of Invisible Line. I Feel As If I've Come To A Place I Never Thought I'd Have To Come To. And I Don't Know How I Got Here. It's A Strange Place. It's A Place Where A Little Harmless Dreaming And Then Some Sleepy, Early-morning Talk Has Led Me Into Considerations Of Death And Annihilation.

A Little Autobiography And A Lot Of Imagination Are Best.

Writers Will Be Judged By What They Write.

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.

I Am A Cigarette With A Body Attached To It

What Do Any Of Us Really Know About Love?

That Was In Crescent City, California, Up Near The Oregon Border. I Left Soon After. But Today I Was Thinking Of That Place, Of Crescent City, And Of How I Was Trying Out A New Life There With My Wife, And How, In The Barber's Chair That Morning, I Had Made Up My Mind To Go. I Was Thinking Today About The Calm I Felt When I Closed My Eyes And Let The Barber's Fingers Move Through My Hair, The Sweetness Of Those Fingers, The Hair Already Starting To Grow.

Fiction Shows The External Effects Of Internal Conditions. Be Aware Of The Tension Between Internal And External Movement.

But He Stays By The Window, Remembering That Life. 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.

In Short, Everything About His Life Was Different For Him At The Bottom Of That Well.

Get In, Get Out. Don't Linger. Go On.

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.

You're...writing For Other Writers To An Extent-the Dead Writers Whose Work You Admire, As Well As The Living Writers You Like To Read.

She Serves Me A Piece Of It A Few Minutes Out Of The Oven. A Little Steam Rises From The Slits On Top. Sugar And Spice - Cinnamon - Burned Into The Crust. But She's Wearing These Dark Glasses In The Kitchen At Ten O'clock In The Morning - Everything Nice - As She Watches Me Break Off A Piece, Bring It To My Mouth, And Blow On It. My Daughter's Kitchen, In Winter. I Fork The Pie In And Tell Myself To Stay Out Of It. She Says She Loves Him. No Way Could It Be Worse.

I Dressed And Went For A Walk - Determined Not To Return Until I Took In What Nature Had To Offer.

This Is Awful. I Don't Know What's Going To Happen To Me Or To Anyone Else In The World.

There Is No God, And Conversation Is A Dying Art.

All Of Us, All Of Us, All Of Us Trying To Save Our Immortal Souls, Some Ways Seemingly More Round About And Mysterious Than Others. We Are Having A Good Time Here. But Hope All Will Be Revealed Soon.

And What Did You Want? To Call Myself Beloved, To Feel Myself Beloved On The Earth.

It Ought To Make Us Feel Ashamed When We Talk Like We Know What We're Talking About When We Talk About Love.

It's Akin To Style, What I'm Talking About, But It Isn't Style Alone. It Is The Writer's Particular And Unmistakable Signature On Everything He Writes. It Is His World And No Other. This Is One Of The Things That Distinguishes One Writer From Another. Not Talent. There's Plenty Of That Around. But A Writer Who Has Some Special Way Of Looking At Things And Who Gives Artistic Expression To That Way Of Looking: That Writer May Be Around For A Time.

A Man Can Go Along Obeying All The Rules And Then It Don't Matter A Damn Anymore.

He Wondered If She Wondered If He Were Watching Her.

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