Quotes by Lorrie Moore

“But there was in the air that kind of distortion that bent you a little; it caused your usual self to grow slippery, to wander off and shop, to get blurry, bleed, bevel with possibility.”

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

“It was strange, this toxic little vein, strange to stand above it, looking down at night, in a dangerous neighborhood, as if they were in love and entitled to such adventures.”

“I had one elegantly folded cookiea short paper nerve baked in an ear.”

“Life is sad. Here is someone.”

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

“Pulling through is what people do around here. There is a kind of bravery in their lives that isnt bravery at all. It is automatic, unflinching, a mix of man and machine, consuming and unquestionab...”

“I often think that at the center of me is a voice that at last did split, a house in my heart so invaded with other people and their speech, friends I believed I was devoted to, people whose lives ...”

“I mean Dennis was saying, looking pointedly at Mave, but Mave was watching the waitress approach. Oh, life, oh, sweet, forgiven for the iceHe grabbed Maves wrist. There was always an emergency. And...”

“How can it be described? How can any of it be described? The trip and the story of the trip are always two different things. The narrator is the one who has stayed home, but then, afterward, presse...”

“Why do you haunt me? You, like a tattoo on my tongue, like the bay leaf at the bottom of every pan. You who sprawled out beside me and sang my horoscope to a Schubert symphony, something about trav...”

“Then, when it didn't crash, when you succeeded in keeping it aloft with your own worthlessness, all you had to do was stagger off, locate your luggage, and, by the time a cab arrived, come up with ...”

“I would be a genius now, Quilty has said three times already, if only Id memorized Shakespeare instead of Lulu. If only, says Mack. Mack himself would be a genius now if only he had been born a com...”

“Divorce, she could see, would be like marriage - a power grab, as in who would be the dog, and who would be the owner of the dog.”

“Observing others go through them, he used to admire midlife crises, the courage and shamelessness and existential daring of them, but after he'd watched his own wife, a respectable nursery school t...”

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

“Let's make our own way,' says the Mother, 'and not in this boat.”

“I would never understand photography, the sneaky, murderous taxidermy of it. ”

“You have a choice," she told the class. "The whorish emptiness of lies or the straightlaced horrors of truth.”

“[T]he normal and the everyday are often amazingly unstoppable, and what is unimaginable is the cessation of them. The world is resilient, and, no matter what interruptions occur, people so badly wa...”