Quotes by Lorrie Moore

“And all love that had overtaken her would have to be a memory, a truck on the interstate roaring up from the left, a thing she must let pass.”

“I had one elegantly folded cookie—a short paper nerve baked in an ear.”

“Life is sad. Here is someone.”

“I mean …” Dennis was saying, looking pointedly at Mave, but Mave was watching the waitress approach. Oh, life, oh, sweet, forgiven for the ice … He grabbed Mave’s wrist. There was always an emergen...”

“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...”

“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.”

“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 isn’t bravery at all. It is automatic, unflinching, a mix of man and machine, consuming and unquestiona...”

“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 I’d memorized Shakespeare instead of Lulu.” “If only,” says Mack. Mack himself would be a genius now if only he had been born...”

“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.”

“My new apartment might be a place where there are lots of children. They might gather on my porch to play, and when I step out for groceries, they will ask me, "Hi, do you have any kids?" and then,...”

“Guns, she was reminded then, were not for girls. They were for boys. They were invented by boys. They were invented by boys who had never gotten over their disappointment that accompanying their ow...”

“I watched my friend Eleanor give birth," she said. "Once you've seen a child born, you realize a baby's not much more than a reconstituted ham and cheese sandwich. Just a little anagram of you and ...”