Quotes by Lorrie Moore

“I just adore her work. Its the subtle way she has of talking about the entirety of a life and the strange moments a life suddenly pivots upon. ... Shes just a genius.”

“No Lease on Life.”

“The Forgotten Helper: A Christmas Story ,”

This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic.

They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.

She knew there were only small joys in life--the big ones were too complicated to be joys when you got all through--and once you realized that, it took a lot of the pressure off.

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

I don’t go back and look at my early work, because the last time I did, many years ago, it left me cringing. If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.

But that inadequacy, or feeling of inadequacy, never really goes away. You just have to trudge ahead in the rain, regardless.

Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.

Where does love go? When something you have taped on the wall falls off, what has happened to the stickum? It has relaxed. It has accumulated an assortment of hairs and fuzzies. It has said Fuck it and given up. It doesnt go anywhere special, its just gone. Energy is created, and then it is destroyed. So much for the laws of physics. So much for chemistry. So much for not so much.

Back at home, days later, feel cranky and tired. Sit on the couch and tell him hes stupid. That you bet he doesnt know who Coriolanus is. That since you moved in youve noticed he rarely reads. He will give you a hurt, hungry-to-learn look, with his James Cagney eyes. He will try to kiss you. Turn your head. Feel suffocated. (from How)

He will talk about what some other people said, and what he and some other people did, and when he never specifically mentions women it will be like the Soviet news agency which never publicizes anything containing the names of the towns where the new bombs are.

The night before, a whole day could have shape and design. But when it was upon you, it could vanish tragically to air.

So I needed to be womanised. I was losing my sheen.

She wore a lot of gray-green corduroy. She had been under the impression that it brought out her eyes, those shy stars.

The turkeys I eat are raised on farms. Theyre different. Theyve signed on the dotted line.

Bucks, doe — thank God everything boils down to money, I always say.During mating season the doe constructs a bed for herself, and then she urinates all around the outside of it. Thats how she gets her mate.So thats it, murmured Odette. I was always peeing in the bed.

Abby began to think that all the beauty and ugliness and turbulence one found scattered through nature, one could also find in people themselves, all collected there, all together in a single place. No matter what terror or loveliness the earth could produce- wind, seas- a person could produce the same, lived with the same, lived with all that mixed-up nature swirling inside, every bit. There was nothing as complex in the world- no flower or stone- as a single hello from a human being.

Oh, she said. I wasnt going to ask, but then you never said anything about it, so I thought Id ask.How about you?Not me, said Odette. She had a poem about marriage. It began, Marriage is the death you want to die, and in front of audiences she never read it with much conviction. Usually she swung her foot back and forth through the whole thing.