Raymond Carver Quotes

Nothing turns to hate so bitter as what once was love.

After a while in marriage, it doesn't work anymore. There is something missing, there is something wrong. There are few marriages that stay alive forever. We like something, and after a while, we hate what we used to love.

When I met you you were oh so sweet, now you give me the bread and you take all the meat.

I have so much hate that it has turned into love.

Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!

It scares me how fast I go from disliking to loving him, and I wonder if it’s this way for everyone.

That's all it takes, one drop of fear to curdle love into hate.

Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all.

If a man had begun to hate an object of his love, so that love is thoroughly destroyed, he will, causes being equal, regard it with more hatred than if he had never loved it, and his hatred will be in proportion to the strength of his former love.

Before, you think of it as a permanent bond of happiness; later, you see that it is a yoke, borne unequally. You marry to keep love, but sometimes that is the surest way to lose it.

I hate being away even for a day. But I'm happiest when I'm working and have my own things going on, so it ultimately makes me a better mother and wife.

I wish you luck,' she said, kissing him on the cheek. He still had the most beautiful eyes of any boy she'd ever seen. But now her heart beat so much faster for someone else.

I have loved him too much not to hate

In that shrinking moment he discovered that he had never hated anyone until now. It was a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational.

They looked at each other, baffled, in love and hate.

This is growing up, having to stomp out love, this is how people turn terrible.

Regardless of whether I can shift my affections to another - and the heart, as you observed, is a notoriously fickle beast - the question remains: should I?

Of course he freaked me out. Of course it's nothing to do with me. But none of that matters. He loved me and now he doesn't. I was everything to him and now I am nothing.

Jude remembered this pain. Every woman had felt some version of it: the end of first love. It was when you learned, for good and always, that love could be impermanent.

And then she frowned, and shook her head, then put her arms around him once more, pressing her face into his shoulder, making a noise that sounded almost like rage. 'What's up?' he asked. 'Nothing. Oh, nothing. Just...' She looked up at him. 'I thought I'd finally got rid of you.' 'I don't think you can.' he said

Love lasts because it changes and not because it stays the same and never faces any challenges.

Though love and hatred are as opposites as fire and water, yet do they sometimes subsist in the breast together towards the same person; nay by their very opposition and desire to destroy each other, are they strengthened and increased.

Man can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversion he will never get back to love.

He was addicted to me and now he has gone cold turkey. He used to send me fifty texts a day. And now he is ignoring me. It's like I was once his Barack Obama. And now I am John McCain, conceding defeat like a sad-face sock puppet, knowing I have sold the best of myself. He, my electorate, not only does not want me, he actively feels pity.

Not only are love and hate such closely related emotions, but it's a lot easier to hate someone you've cared about than someone you never have.