Lorrie Moore Quotes

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

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.

I nodded, trying to imagine the very particular sadness of a vanished childhood yogurt now found only in France. It was a very special sort of sadness, individual, and in its inability to induce sympathy, in its tuneless spark, it bypassed poetry and entered science.

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.

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

Back at home, days later, feel cranky and tired. Sit on the couch and tell him he's stupid. That you bet he doesn't know who Coriolanus is. That since you moved in you've 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")

Anyone who's read all of Proust plus The Man withour Qualities is bound t be missing out on a few other titles.

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 wasn't a big boom sound.

The key to marriage, she concluded, was just not to take the thing too personally.

She hated money! though she knew it was like blood and you needed it. Still, it was also like blood in that she often couldn't stand the sight of it.

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.

Tell me something wonderful," he said to Dane. "Tell me that we are going to die dreamfully and loved in our sleep."
"You're always writing one of your plays on the phone," said Dane.
"I said, something wonderful. Say something about springtime."
"It is sloppy and wet. It is a beast from the sea."
"Ah," said Harry.