Lorrie Moore

I always feel that the book I'm working on is my last book.

— Lorrie Moore

Sometimes I ask myself if writing novels is even respectable.

— Lorrie Moore

Literature, of course, is not a contest.

— Lorrie Moore

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

— Lorrie Moore

There seemed nothing so true as a yellow tree.

— Lorrie Moore

“A veteran of the gender wars.”

— Lorrie Moore

Most things good for writing are bad for life.

— Lorrie Moore

I wondered about the half-life of regret.

— Lorrie Moore

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

— Lorrie Moore

I've accrued a kind of patience, I believe, loosely like change.

— Lorrie Moore

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

— Lorrie Moore

“A story can be like a mad, lovely visitor, with whom you spend a rather exciting weekend”

— Lorrie Moore

“Forget being a decent man, Terence. Go for castability. Could you even play a decent man in a movie?”

— Lorrie Moore

“Amber was past tense. We were covering her inanimate face in the white sheet of was. ”

— Lorrie Moore

“A match made in heaven - where do you get those? That's what I want to know!”

— Lorrie Moore

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

— Lorrie Moore

Editing is just ongoing. I don't count drafts, or know what would fully constitute a draft. But I try to fix as…

— Lorrie Moore

Forgiveness lives alone and far off down the road, but bitterness and art are close, gossipy neighbors, sharing the same clothesline, hanging…

— Lorrie Moore

“it seemed one could just say are you serious? for the rest of existence and it would never be unjustified and would…

— lorrie moore

When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know…

— Lorrie Moore

“This ceremony of approval was a charade - everything had been decided before we got here - and as with all charades…

— Lorrie Moore

“I cried for everyone and for all the scrabbly, funny love one sent out into the world like some hit song that…

— Lorrie Moore

Women now were told not to settle for second best, told that they deserved better, but at a time, it seemed, when…

— Lorrie Moore

“These were the sorts of notions that had been raised in all my classes, and we had chased them round and round…

— Lorrie Moore

Make a list of all the lovers you've ever had. Warren Lasher Ed "Rubberhead" Catapano Charles Deats or Keats Alfonse Tuck it…

— Lorrie Moore

“A healthy death, like anything — job promotions or looking younger — was simply a matter of “feeling good about yourself.” Which…

— Lorrie Moore

“She had worn a sequined, strapless wedding gown, and left her bridesmaid to wear brightly flowered dresses to fit for a kind…

— Lorrie Moore

“Beauty could not love you back. People were not what they seemed and certainly not what they said. Madness was contagious. Memory…

— Lorrie Moore

If one loves stories, then one would naturally love the story of the story. Or the story behind the story, pick your…

— Lorrie Moore

To me, writing is much freer than dancing. With writing, you could do it whenever you wanted. You didn't have to do…

— Lorrie Moore

“I was too fresh from childhood. Subconsciously, my deepest brain still a cupboard of fairy tales, I suppose I believed that if…

— Lorrie Moore

She had, without realizing it at the time, learned to follow Nick's gaze, learned to learn his lust...his desires remained memorized within…

— Lorrie Moore

“Though she would have preferred long ago to have died, fled, gotten it all over with, the body--Jesus, how the body!--took its…

— Lorrie Moore

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…

— Lorrie Moore

“Love is art, not truth. It's like painting a scenery.' These are the things one takes from mothers. Once they die, of…

— Lorrie Moore

“This was supposed to be the Presidential Suite," she said, gazing into the room at the holes in the wall. well, even…

— Lorrie Moore

Start dating someone who is funny, someone who has what in high school you called a "really great sense of humor" and…

— Lorrie Moore

“On-yez, where are you from, dear?' asked a black-slacked, frosted-haired woman whose skin was papery and melanomic with suntan. 'Originally.' She eyed…

— Lorrie Moore

“The situation was not easy for her, they knew. Once, at the start of last semester, she had skipped into her lecture…

— Lorrie Moore

What makes humans human is precisely that they do not know the future. That is why they do the fateful and amusing…

— Lorrie Moore