Latest Lorrie Moore Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I did think reviewers were supposed to be polite about story collections - collections are rather delicate creatures in the literary environment - but not everybody got this memo, I guess.

  Lorrie Moore

  Thinking, Stories, Environment

  "'I would like to live in that year forever.'". Interview with Michael Hafford, logger.believermag.com. April 24, 2014.

• Editing is just ongoing. I don't count drafts, or know what would fully constitute a draft. But I try to fix as I go. And there's always more to fix.

  Lorrie Moore

  Editing, Trying, Ongoing

  "'I would like to live in that year forever.'". Interview with Michael Hafford, logger.believermag.com. April 24, 2014.

• I do have people in mind when I write. I don't know precisely who they are, however, or how many of them there are.

  Lorrie Moore

  Writing, People, Mind

  "'I would like to live in that year forever.'". Interview with Michael Hafford, logger.believermag.com. April 24, 2014.

• I don't think of any sentence as a "one-liner", but I do pay attention to how people actually speak when they are being funny. Rhythm is key.

  Lorrie Moore

  Thinking, Keys, People

  "'I would like to live in that year forever.'". Interview with Michael Hafford, logger.believermag.com. April 24, 2014.

• A funny line can never exist on its own. It needs to be surrounded by mood and circumstances.

  Lorrie Moore

  Needs, Lines, Mood

  "'I would like to live in that year forever.'". Interview with Michael Hafford, logger.believermag.com. April 24, 2014.

• If I retain any freshness of approach, it's by going slowly having long intervals between finished projects.

  Lorrie Moore

  Long, Projects, Approach

  "'I would like to live in that year forever.'". Interview with Michael Hafford, logger.believermag.com. April 24, 2014.

• What do I do when writing isn't going well? Well, I don't write - which is symptom, cure, and cause. And then sometimes I just tell myself, as I'm writing, "I'll fix it later." And sometimes it's true, I do.

  Lorrie Moore

  Writing, Causes, Sometimes

  The Believer interview, www.believermag.com. October 2005.

• Awkwardness is where tension is, and tension is where the story is. It's also where the comedy is, which I'm interested in; when it resolves it tends to resolve toward melancholy, a certain resignation, which I find interesting as well.

  Lorrie Moore

  Interesting, Stories, Comedy

  The Believer interview, www.believermag.com. October 2005.

• If prose can cast a spell, we will listen to it no matter what it's saying. If a narrative uses language in a magical and enlivening way, we will listen to the story. But if the language doesn't cast a spell, we will listen to it only if it is telling us something that actually happened.

  Lorrie Moore

  Stories, Use, Narrative

  The Believer interview, www.believermag.com. October 2005.

• What little reality television I've seen seems to be about economic desperation. Like the marathon dancing of the Great Depression, which should give us pause. People willing to eat flies and worms for a sum that is less than the weekly paycheck of the show's producer. I haven't seen "reality television" that is other than this kind of painful, sadistic exploitation of fit young people looking for agents.

  Lorrie Moore

  Reality, People, Giving

  The Believer interview, www.believermag.com. October 2005.