Lorrie Moore Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• The detachment of the artist is kind of creepy. It's kind of rude, and yet really it's where art comes from. It's not the same as courage. It's closer to bad manners than to courage. If you're going to be a writer, you basically have to say, 'this is just who I am'. There's a certain indefensibility about it. It's not about loving your community and taking care of it — you're not attached to the chamber of commerce. It's a little unsafe. You have to be willing to have only four friends, not 11.

  Lorrie Moore

  Art, Who I Am, Loving You

  "Lorrie Moore" by Louisa Kamps, www.elle.com. September 16, 2009.

  8 Copy quote

• I wondered about the half-life of regret.

  Lorrie Moore

  Regret, Half, Half Life

  Lorrie Moore (2009). “A Gate at the Stairs”, p.124, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• Start dating someone who is funny, someone who has what in high school you called a "really great sense of humor" and what now your creative writing class calls "self-contempt giving rise to comic form." Write down all of his jokes, but don't tell him you are doing this. Make up anagrams of his old girlfriend's name and name all of your socially handicapped characters with them. Tell him his old girlfriend is in all of your stories and then watch how funny he can be, see what a really great sense of humor he can have.

  Lorrie Moore

  Girlfriend, Writing, School

  7 Copy quote

• Don't make your own life your project in your own life: total waste of time.

  Lorrie Moore

  Waste, Wasting Time, Projects

  Lorrie Moore (2009). “A Gate at the Stairs”, p.262, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  7 Copy quote

• You emptied the top rack of the dishwasher but not the bottom, so the clean dishes have gotten all mixed up with the dirty ones - and now you want to have sex?

  Lorrie Moore

  Sex, Dirty, Want

  Lorrie Moore (2009). “A Gate at the Stairs”, p.202, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

• The people in this house, I felt, and I included myself, were like characters each from a different grim and gruesome fairy tale. None of us was in the same story. We were all grotesques, and self-riveted, but in separate narratives, and so our interactions seemed weird and richly meaningless, like the characters in a Tennessee Williams play, with their bursting unimportant, but spell-bindingly mad speeches.

  Lorrie Moore

  Character, Self, Play

  4 Copy quote

• I had never feared insomnia before--like prison, wouldn't it just give you more time to read?

  Lorrie Moore

  Insomnia, Giving, Prison

  Lorrie Moore (2009). “A Gate at the Stairs”, p.125, Faber & Faber

  9 Copy quote

• She smiled at him, with longing. 'Where do you live,' she asked, 'and how do I get there?

  Lorrie Moore

  Longing

  Lorrie Moore (2012). “Birds of America: Stories”, p.23, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• An author's life is different, complex, and ongoing, while a character's remains frozen in one little story.

  Lorrie Moore

  Character, Different, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• I missed him. Love, I realized, was something your spine memorized. There was nothing you could do about that.

  Lorrie Moore

  Spine, I Realized

  Lorrie Moore (2012). “Anagrams”, p.37, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Most things good for writing are bad for life.

  Lorrie Moore

  Writing

  4 Copy quote

• Once love had seemed like magic. Now it seemed like tricks.

  Lorrie Moore

  Magic, Tricks

  Lorrie Moore (2012). “Like Life”, p.172, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Plots are for dead people.

  Lorrie Moore

  People, Plot, Dead People

  6 Copy quote

• The affectionate farce I make of him ignores the ways I feel his lack of love for me. But we are managing.

  Lorrie Moore

  Farce, Lack Of Love, Way

  Lorrie Moore (2012). “Who Will Run the Frog Hospital”, p.4, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

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

  Lorrie Moore

  Photography, Taxidermy, Sneaky

  7 Copy quote

• Forgiveness lives alone and far off down the road, but bitterness and art are close, gossipy neighbors, sharing the same clothesline, hanging out their things, getting their laundry confused.

  Lorrie Moore

  Forgiveness, Art, Confused

  Lorrie Moore (2012). “Self-Help”, p.59, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• Perhaps we had at last reached that stage of intimacy that destroys intimacy.

  Lorrie Moore

  Lasts, Intimacy, Stage

  FaceBook post by Lorrie Moore from Jul 15, 2011

  7 Copy quote

• There was the usual dreaminess, I suppose. Also a shyness that caused me - and others - to notice that I could express myself better by writing than by speaking. This is typical of many writers, I think. What is a drawback in childhood is an asset to a literary life. Not being fluent on one’s feet sends one to the page and a habit is born.

  Lorrie Moore

  Writing, Thinking, Feet

  "Lorrie Moore, The Art of Fiction No. 167". Interview with Elizabeth Gaffney, www.theparisreview.org. 2001.

  6 Copy quote

• It is like having a book out from the library. It is like constantly having a book out from the library.

  Lorrie Moore

  Book, Library

  Lorrie Moore (2010). “The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore”, p.537, Faber & Faber

  6 Copy quote

• If you look at most womens writing, women writers will describe women differently from the way male writers describe women. The details that go into a woman writers description of a female character are, perhaps, a little more judgmental. Theyre looking for certain things, because they know what women do to look a certain way.

  Lorrie Moore

  Writing, Character, Males

  6 Copy quote

• We were in dialogue that was about something other than what we were saying.

  Lorrie Moore

  Dialogue

  Lorrie Moore (2009). “A Gate at the Stairs”, p.76, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• Humor comes from the surprise release of some buried tension.

  Lorrie Moore

  Surprise, Release, Buried

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Real, Tools, Gravy

  7 Copy quote

• If I had a staff of even one person, or could tolerate a small amphetamine habit, or entertain the possibility of weekly blood transfusions, or had been married to Vera Nabokov, or had a housespouse of even minimal abilities, a literary life would be easier to bring about. (In my mind I see all your male readers rolling their eyes. But your female ones - what is that? Are they nodding in agreement? Are their fists in the air?)

  Lorrie Moore

  Writing, Eye, Air

  8 Copy quote

Page 3 of 6

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin