Lorrie Moore Quotes - Page 4

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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

  Lorrie Moore

  Surprise, Release, Buried

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• You know, as fiction writers, if our instincts are off, we can't pay our bills.

  Lorrie Moore

  Fiction, Pay, Bills

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• 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

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• Love is the answer, said the songs, and that's OK. It was OK, I supposed, as an answer. But no more than that. It was not a solution; it wasn't really even an answer, just a reply.

  Lorrie Moore

  Song, Love Is, Answers

  Lorrie Moore (2009). “A Gate at the Stairs”, p.318, Vintage

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• 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

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• Nothing's a joke with me. It just all comes out like one.

  Lorrie Moore

  Jokes

  Lorrie Moore (2010). “The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore”, p.443, Faber & Faber

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• When she packed up to leave, she knew that she was saying goodbye to something important, which was not that bad, in a way, because it meant that at least you had said hello to it to begin with.

  Lorrie Moore

  Goodbye, Important, Way

  FaceBook post by Lorrie Moore from Jul 22, 2012

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• I've come to realize that life, while being everything, is also strangely not much. Except when the light shines on it a different way and then you realize it's a lot after all!

  Lorrie Moore

  Shine On, Light, Shining

  Lorrie Moore (2009). “A Gate at the Stairs”, p.320, Faber & Faber

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• If one loves stories, then one would naturally love the story of the story. Or the story behind the story, pick your preposition. It does seem to me to be a kind of animal impulse almost, a mammalian curiosity. For a reader to wonder about the autobiography in a fiction may be completely unavoidable and in fact may speak to the success of a particular narrative, though it may also speak to its failure.

  Lorrie Moore

  Animal, Curiosity, Stories

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• I always had the sense with her that she didn't suffer fools gladly but that life was taking great pains to show her how.

  Lorrie Moore

  Pain, Suffering, Fool

  Lorrie Moore (2009). “A Gate at the Stairs”, p.86, Vintage

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• 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

  People, Funeral, Who Your Friends Are

  FaceBook post by Lorrie Moore from May 29, 2011

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• Later I would come to believe that erotic ties were all a spell, a temporary psychosis, even a kind of violence, or at least they coexisted with these states.

  Lorrie Moore

  Sex, Believe, Psychosis

  Lorrie Moore (2009). “A Gate at the Stairs”, p.166, Faber & Faber

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• She had, without realizing it at the time, learned to follow Nick's gaze, learned to learn his lust...his desires remained memorized within her. She looked at the attractive women he would look at...She had become him: she longed for these women. But she was also herself, and so she despised them. She lusted after them, but she also wanted to beat them up. A rapist. She had become a rapist, driving to work in a car.

  Lorrie Moore

  Car, Lust, Desire

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• I don't care if I'm a fish, I still want a bicycle.

  Lorrie Moore

  Care, Want, Fishes

  Lorrie Moore (2010). “The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore”, p.660, Faber & Faber

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• As the most recently arrived to earthly life, children can seem in lingering possession of some heavenly lidless eye.

  Lorrie Moore

  Children, Eye, Possession

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• Things between us were dissolving like an ice cub in a glass: the smaller it got, the faster it disappeared.

  Lorrie Moore

  Glasses, Ice, Cubs

  Lorrie Moore (2009). “A Gate at the Stairs”, p.204, Vintage

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• the compulsion to read and write - and it seems to me it should be, even must be, a compulsion - is a bit of mental wiring the species has selected, over time, in order, as the life span increases, to keep us interested in ourselves.

  Lorrie Moore

  Reading, Writing, Order

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• I often think that at the center of me is a voice that at last did split, a house in my heart so invaded with other people and their speech, friends I believed I was devoted to, people whose lives I can simply guess at now, that it gives me the impression I am simply a collection of them, that they all existed for themselves, but had inadvertently formed me, then vanished. But, what: Should I have been expected to create my own self, out of nothing, out of thin, thin air and alone?

  Lorrie Moore

  Heart, Thinking, Air

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• Sometimes I ask myself if writing novels is even respectable.

  Lorrie Moore

  Writing, Sometimes, Novel

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• But family life sometimes had a vortex, like weather. It could be like a tornado in a quiet zigzag: get close enough and you might see within it a spinning eighteen-wheeler and a woman.

  Lorrie Moore

  Weather, Vortex, Might

  Lorrie Moore (2009). “A Gate at the Stairs”, p.146, Vintage

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