395 Quotes by Lorrie Moore

I tried not to think about my life. I did not have any good solid plans for it long-term - no bad plans either, no plans at all - and the lostness of that, compared with the clear ambitions of my friends (marriage, children, law school), sometimes shamed me. Other times in my mind I defended such a condition as morally and intellectually superior - my life was open and ready and free - but that did not make it less lonely.

Rather than a teaching tool, I think a novel is more of a witnessing entity. A witnessing entity? What is that? I just want the reader to step in and experience it as a story.

To write a short story, you have to be able to stay up all night.

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.

I want to create something that doesn't exist exactly in the real world, but exists in a kind of parallel to the real world.

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

I don't sit down to write a funny story. Every single thing I sit down to write is meant to be sad.

You chose love like a belief, a faith, a place, a box for one's heart to knock against like a spook in the house.

I love plays. Even bad ones. I like the fact that actual live, breathing people are standing before you in tense situations that you are not personally responsible for.