395 Quotes by 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 her how.

If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.

If you're suicidal, and you don't actually kill yourself, you become known as 'wry.

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.

But I believed in starting over. There was finally, I knew, only rupture and hurt and falling short between all persons, but, Shirley, the best revenge was to turn your life into a small gathering of miracles. If I could not be anchored and profound, I would try, at least, to be kind.

Those are the love killers. They love you and then they kill you. They're from another planet. Supposedly.

It was not miserable - often I did not miss her at all. But there was sometimes a quick, sinking ache when I walked in the door and saw she was not there. Twice, however, I'd felt the same sinking feeling when she was.

She was unequal to anyone's wistfulness. She had made too little of her life. Its loneliness shamed her like a crime.

I always do the wrong. I do the wrong thing so much that the times I actually do the right thing stand out so brightly in my memory that I forget I always do the wrong thing.