395 Quotes by Lorrie Moore

I’ve come to realize that life, while being everything, is also strangely not much. Except when the light shines on it a different way and then you realize it’s a lot after all!

You know, as fiction writers, if our instincts are off, we can’t pay our bills.

Editing is just ongoing. I don’t count drafts, or know what would fully constitute a draft. But I try to fix as I go. And there’s always more to fix.

At times like these, she thought, it was probably a good idea to carry a small hand puppet.

I count too heavily on birthdays, though I know I shouldn’t. Inevitably I begin to assess my life by them, figure out how I’m doing by how many people remember; it’s like the old fantasy of attending your own funeral: You get to see who your friends are, get to see who shows up.

I tried to live cautiously – or eventually learned to try to live – in a spirit of regret prevention, and I could not see how Bonnie could accomplish such a thing in this situation. Regret – operatic, oceanic, fathomless – seemed to stretch before her in every direction. No matter which path she took, regret would stain her feet and scratch her arms and rain down on her, lightlessly and lifelong. It had already begun.

I would look out upon the wildflowers, the mulch of swamps and leaves, the spring mosses greening on the rocks, or the boulderous mountains of street-black snow, whatever season it happened to be- my mittens clotted with ice, or my hands grimy with marsh mud- and from the back of my larynx I’d send part of my voice out toward the horizon and part of it straight up toward the sky. There must have been some pain in me. I wanted to howl and fly and break apart.

Marriage, she felt, was a fine arrangement generally, except that one never got it generally. One got it very, very specifically.

I’m going to marry you till you puke.