Lorrie Moore

“Every family is a family of alligators.”

— Lorrie Moore

Humor comes from the surprise release of some buried tension.

— Lorrie Moore

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

— Lorrie Moore

You are unhappy because you believe in such a thing as happy.

— Lorrie Moore

Love is art, not truth. It’s like painting scenery.

— Lorrie Moore

I don't have a love life. I have a like life.

— Lorrie Moore

“It's two against one out here; we just keep taking turns.”

— Lorrie Moore

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

— Lorrie Moore

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

— Lorrie Moore

“She had expected a pistol to seem light and natural-a seamless extension of her angry feral self.”

— Lorrie Moore

“He was thinking, but she could tell he wasn't good at it…'Where do you live,' she asked, 'and how do I get…

— Lorrie Moore

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a…

— Lorrie Moore

“Bummer,' said Ira, his new word for "I must remain as neutral as possible" and "Your mother's a whore.”

— Lorrie Moore

“I had one elegantly folded cookie—a short paper nerve baked in an ear.”

— Lorrie Moore

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

— Lorrie Moore

I'm very interested in what people will do for money. Money: it's timeless.

— Lorrie Moore

Better to think of writing, of what one does, as an activity, rather than an identity to keep the calling a verb…

— Lorrie Moore

“I don't have a love life. I have a like life.' Mamie smiled. She thought how nice that might be, to be…

— Lorrie Moore

“The catalog showed a man sleeping peacefully while his model-wife read a book in soft but focused light. In real life, however,…

— Lorrie Moore

“The later-afternoon air of our exhalations hung in brief clouds before us. The thought balloon of my own breath said, "How have…

— Lorrie Moore

“You emptied the top rack of the dishwasher but not the bottom, so the clean dishes have gotten all mixed up with…

— Lorrie Moore

I've had nonstop financial problems my whole adult life. It's always been a constant balance, year to year: 'Where's the time? Where's…

— Lorrie Moore

“After four movies, three concerts, and two-and-a-half museums, you sleep with him. It seems the right number of cultural events.”

— Lorrie Moore

I don't think of any sentence as a "one-liner", but I do pay attention to how people actually speak when they are…

— Lorrie Moore

“Observing others go through them, he used to admire midlife crises, the courage and shamelessness and existential daring of them, but after…

— Lorrie Moore

Blasts from the past were like the rooms one entered and re-entered in dreams: they would not stay nailed down. When you…

— Lorrie Moore

If I had a staff of even one person, or could tolerate a small amphetamine habit, or entertain the possibility of weekly…

— Lorrie Moore

What little reality television I've seen seems to be about economic desperation. Like the marathon dancing of the Great Depression, which should…

— Lorrie Moore

All the way out I listen to the car AM radio, bad lyrics of trailer park love, gin and tonic love, strobe…

— Lorrie Moore

“Back at home, days later, feel cranky and tired. Sit on the couch and tell him he's stupid. That you bet he…

— Lorrie Moore

“I tried not to think about my life. I did not have any good solid plans for it long-term - not bad…

— Lorrie Moore

I often think that at the center of me is a voice that at last did split, a house in my heart…

— Lorrie Moore

“She had to learn not to be afraid of a man, the way, in your childhood, you learned not to be afraid…

— Lorrie Moore

“When I was little, I didn’t understand that you could change a few sounds in a name or a phrase and have…

— Lorrie Moore

“And though he continued never to express a single word of love for me, not in any way of his several languages,…

— Lorrie Moore

“She came to this California university for one reason, she reminds herself: the paycheck. Although every time the paycheck arrives the amount…

— Lorrie Moore

“Cold men destroy women,” my mother wrote me years later. “They woo them with something personable that they bring out for show,…

— Lorrie Moore

“Why do you haunt me? You, like a tattoo on my tongue, like the bay leaf at the bottom of every pan.…

— Lorrie Moore

“1976. The Bicentennial. In the laundromat, you want for the time on your coins to run out. Through the porthole of the…

— Lorrie Moore

“In the Dictionary 'lumpy jaw' comes just before 'lunacy,' but in life there are no such clues. Suddenly, for no reason, you…

— Lorrie Moore