Lorrie Moore citations

“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”

“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…”

“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.”

“All the world's a stage we're going through.”

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

“One had to build shelters. One had to make pockets and live inside them.”

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

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

“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 bigsound.”

“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.”

“Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.”

“Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.”

“Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself.”

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

“Usually she ordered a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, as well as a brownie, propping up her sadness with chocolate and caffeine so that it became an anxiety.”

“Once love had seemed like magic. Now it seemed like tricks.”

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

“But that inadequacy, or feeling of inadequacy, never really goes away. You just have to trudge ahead in the rain, regardless.”

“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.”

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

“She was afraid, and the afraid, she realized, sought opportunities for bravery in love.”

“There were moments bristling with deadness, when she looked out at her life and went, "" Or worse, feeling interrupted and tired, "Wha—?”

“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”

“A woman had to choose her own particular unhappiness carefully. That was the only happiness in life: to choose the best unhappiness. An unwise move, good God, you could squander everything.”

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