A Quote by Raymond Carver

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.
In this business you break a leg and 150 other people are out of work while production is shut down. It's not like you were an accountant and could still work with your leg in a cast.
There's something special in music about the repetition of playing something where it becomes a home and a fortress and a space that you inhabit, like maybe we could move this little thing here, or rearrange the furniture. You're so acquainted with every part of it.
I think my first girlfriend and I hardly spoke to each other in the year we were going out. In fact we never even spoke to each other to formally break it off. For all I know she still thinks we're together. Maybe in a parallel universe we're very happy.
I'll think about something else. I'll just sit quietly. If I could sit still. If I could sit still, maybe I could read. Oh, all the books are about people who love each other, truly and sweetly. What do they want to write about that for? Don't they know it isn't true? Don't they know it's a lie, it's a God-damned lie? What do they have to tell about that for, when they know how it hurts?
Because if you don't know someone all that well, you react to their surface qualities, the superficial stereotypes-they throw off like sparks. But once you fight through the sparks and get to the person, you find just that, a person, a big jumble of likes, dislikes, fears, and desires.
I always feel like I have to keep going. You can sit back and say, 'Maybe I can stop.' But then you're yesterday, and I love tomorrow.
I like to keep working and keep changing. It's a hopeful, optimistic thing to think and sit about what you could do next. Maybe it's blind optimism.
No one asks you to throw Mozart out of the window. Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too, and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Christ. Keep them in your heart. But make room for the others, the coming ones, the ones who are already scratching on the window-panes.
I'm a little like Roy Keane. Mentally I'm very strong. I'm very hungry. I'm very dedicated. You can't throw me off my stride. That's how I break people. I just don't care what they do. They can throw 180, 180 and 180 again and I'm like, 'so what?' They've got to keep it up to beat me.
...maybe it was better to break a man's leg than to break his heart.
He wanted to heave the glasses against the wall. Break them, break everything he could reach. Beat it, rend it. He stared out the window, imagined the city in flames, consumed to ashes. And still it wasn't enough.
Throw away those little pieces of paper. Get yourself a big, beautiful canvas. Bring from this nature the most beautiful colors. Find the serene scene within. Find the joy in each corner of your life. Sit still and feel what is within you. Sit still and paint like you have never painted before.
The voice is like a man, like ourselves: we all feel melancholic about what we have lost, the things we could do when we were young. But having the possibility to still perform is wonderful. The voice loses elasticity as you age, but on the other hand, maybe you are more mature as an interpreter, maybe your approach to singing deepens.
I can very much enjoy taking a year off. Whereas some people would feel crippled by that, I can feel enlarged by it. And then I also like to work nonstop, maybe for a year-and-a-half, and then take a year off.
I couldn't meet his gaze. I stared at the table just behind him--the mess of cards on it, the lantern giving off its quiet glow. "When you gave me your shirt to wear that night, I could feel you. I could feel your essence." The world went still. We were standing only inches from each other, not touching. Outside, I could hear the faint murmur of the wind blowing through the trees. "What did it feel like?" he asked in a low voice. "Like...coming home," I admitted.
Honing a thing down until you can still get through with economy, that's power. Learn your technique thoroughly, immerse yourself in it, and then just throw it all out the window, and express what you feel... and it will come through that you are a technician.
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