Quotes by Lorrie Moore

Lets make our own way, says the Mother, and not in this boat.

I would never understand photography, the sneaky, murderous taxidermy of it.

You have a choice, she told the class. The whorish emptiness of lies or the straightlaced horrors of truth.

Living did not mean one joy piled upon another. It was merely the hope for less pain, hope played like a playing card upon another hope, a wish for kindnesses and mercies to emerge like kings and queens in an unexpected change of the game. One could hold the cards oneself or not: they would land the same regardless.

[T]he normal and the everyday are often amazingly unstoppable, and what is unimaginable is the cessation of them. The world is resilient, and, no matter what interruptions occur, people so badly want to return to their lives and get on with them. A veneer of civilization descends quickly, like a shining rain. Dust is settled.

My new apartment might be a place where there are lots of children. They might gather on my porch to play, and when I step out for groceries, they will ask me, Hi, do you have any kids? and then, Why not, dont you like kids?I like kids, I will explain. I like kids very much. And when I almost run over them with my car, in my driveway, I will feel many different things.

Guns, she was reminded then, were not for girls. They were for boys. They were invented by boys. They were invented by boys who had never gotten over their disappointment that accompanying their own orgasm there wasnt a big boom sound.

I watched my friend Eleanor give birth, she said. Once youve seen a child born, you realize a babys not much more than a reconstituted ham and cheese sandwich. Just a little anagram of you and what youve been eating for nine months.

She hated money! though she knew it was like blood and you needed it. Still, it was also like blood in that she often couldnt stand the sight of it.

So much urgent and lifelike love went rumbling around underground and died there, never got expressed at all, so let some errant inconvenient attraction have its way. There was so little time

Every family is a family of alligators.

Surely that was why faith had been invented: to raise teenagers without dying. Although of course it was also why death was invented: to escape teenagers altogether.

He began to prefer talking on the phone to actually getting together with someone, preferred the bodilessness of it, and started to turn down social engagements. He didnt want to actually sit across from someone in a restaurant, look at their face, and eat food. He wanted to turn away, not deal with the face, have the waitress bring them two tin cans and some string so they could just converse, in a faceless dialogue.

Humor comes from the surprise release of some buried tension.

When I was in graduate school, I had a teacher who said to me, Women writers should marry somebody who thinks writing is cute. Because if they really realised what writing was, they would run a mile.

Ive never been to a dinner party where everyone at the dinner table didnt say something funny.

You know, Im just a very boring, not very funny person in person. I dont feel pressured to be otherwise.

I dont sit down to write a funny story. Every single thing I sit down to write is meant to be sad.

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

“Though she would have preferred long ago to have died, fled, gotten it all over with, the body--Jesus, how the body!--took its time. It possessed its own wishes and nostalgias. You could not just turn neatly into light and slip out the window. You couldnt go like that. Within ones own departing but stubborn flesh, there was only the long, sentimental, piecemeal farewell. Sir? A towel. Is there a towel? The body, hauling sadness, pursued the soul, hobbled after. The body was like a sweet, dim dog trotting lamely toward the gate as you tried slowly to drive off, out the long driveway. Take me, take me, too, barked the dog. Dont go, dont go, it said, running along the fence, almost keeping pace but not quite, its reflection a shrinking charm in the car mirrors as you trundled past the viburnium, past the pin grove, past the property line, past every last patch of land, straight down the swallowing road, disappearing and disappearing. Until at last it was true: you had disappeared.”