quotes by Lorrie Moore

"This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic."
— Lorrie Moore (Like Life)

"Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself. "
— Lorrie Moore (Birds of America: Stories)

"Once love had seemed like magic. Now it seemed like tricks."
— Lorrie Moore

"You are unhappy because you believe in such a thing as happy."
— Lorrie Moore

"I count too heavily on birthdays, though I know I shouldn't. Inevitably I begin to assess my life by them, figure out how I'm doing by how many people remember; it's like the old fantasy of attending your own funeral: You get to see who your friends are, get to see who shows up. "
— Lorrie Moore (Anagrams)

""That is what is wrong with cold people. Not that they have ice in their souls - we all have a bit of that - but that they insist every word and deed mirror that ice. They never learn the beauty or value of gesture. The emotional necessity. For them, it is all honesty before kindness, truth before art. Love is art, not truth. It's like painting scenery."
— Lorrie Moore (Self-Help)

""No matter what terror the earth could produce - winds, 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."
"
— Lorrie Moore (Birds of America: Stories)

"(Such a life)engaged gross quantities of hope and despair and set them wildly side by side, like a Third World country of the heart. "
— Lorrie Moore (Birds of America: Stories)

""The thing to remember about love affairs," says Simone, "is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney."
...

"We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney," explains Simone.
"And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back. Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they dropped dead." Simone swallows some wine. "Love affairs are like that," she says. "They are all like that.""
— Lorrie Moore

"She hadn't been given the proper tools to make a real life with, she decided, that was it. She'd been given a can of gravy and a hairbrush and told, "There you go." -- Willing"
— Lorrie Moore

"It is like having a book out from the library.
It is like constantly having a book out from the library."
— Lorrie Moore (Self-Help)

"Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation."
— Lorrie Moore

"When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet. "
— Lorrie Moore

"Make a list of all the lovers you've ever had.

Warren Lasher
Ed "Rubberhead" Catapano
Charles Deats or Keats
Alfonse

Tuck it in your pocket. Leave it lying around, conspicuously. Somehow you lose it. Make "mislaid" jokes to yourself. Make another list."
— Lorrie Moore

"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-uup 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."
— Lorrie Moore

"Aging flowers, daisies when they die look like hopeful hags, their sunny, hatless faces, their shriveled, limp hair. Tulips wither into birdcages, six black stamens inside, each dried to a dim chirp."
— Lorrie Moore (Self-help)

"Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or even if there is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more than ten minutes a day; like sit-ups, they can make you thin"
— Lorrie Moore (Self-Help)

"Pleasantness was the machismo of the Midwest. There was something athletic about it. You flexed your face into a smile and let it hover there like the dare of a cat."
— Lorrie Moore (Like Life)

"“I love you,” she said to Number Two. She was romantic that way. Her heart was big and bursting. Though her brain was drying and subdividing like a cauliflower. She called both boys “honey,” and it shocked her a little. How many honeys could you have? Perhaps you could open your arms and have so many honeys you achieved a higher spiritual plane, like a shelf in a health food store, or a pine tree, mystically inert, life barking at the bottom like a dog.”"
— Lorrie Moore (Like Life)

"Love drains you, takes with it much of your blood sugar and water weight. You are like a house slowly losing its electricity, the fans slowing, the lights dimming and flickering; the clocks stop and go and stop."
— Lorrie Moore (Self-Help)