Quotes from Lorrie Moore

Music ultimately left him unstirred. Like a god irritated with his own tinkerings. Despite his talent, or perhaps because of it, he heard only the machinery, the clanking and spitting. He felt nothing. No compassion.

No, we're not getting married," I told my mother on the phone when she asked. "He's going to California and I'm staying here." Usually she doesn't phone. Usually she just does things like send me notes with histrionic scrawlings that read, "Well, you know, I can't use these," and along with the notes she encloses coupons for Kotex or Midol.

it seemed one could just say are you serious? for the rest of existence and it would never be unjustified and would always have to be answered and so would keep the conversation going

Denial, when one was accused, was a life force, and would trump any desire to confess. Perhaps this was the animal strength of the psychopathic brain. Or the psychopathy of the animal brain. An admission of guilt would knock the strength right out of you—making it easier for them to twist your arms behind you and put the handcuffs on.

Unless you have a life of great importance, she said, regrets are stupid, crumpled-up tickets to a circus that has already left town.

Visit a place at night, she knew, and it was yours.

he had had some eye work done: a lift to remove the puff and bloat; he would rather look startled and insane than look fifty-six.

I was realising that all new feelings from here on in would probably be bad ones. Surprises would no longer be good.

Pek çok eski Frans?z tüccar? doÄŸayla, özellikle de suyla öyle düÅŸmanca iliÅŸkiler içindeymiÅŸ ki isim verdikleri her ÅŸey kasvetlerini ta??yordu: bütün hoÅŸ tatil yerlerinin adlar? Frans?zcadan Ölümün Kap?s?, Dalgalar?n Mezar? ya da Åžeytan?n Gölü olarak çevrilmiÅŸti.

This lunge at moral fastidiousness was something she'd noticed a lot in the people around here. They were not good people. They were not kind. They played around and lied to their spouses. But they recycled their newspapers!

You live if you dance to the voice that ails you.

It's not that men fear intimacy,' I said to Eleanor. 'It's that they're hypochondriacs of intimacy: They always think they have it when they don't. Gerard thinks we're very close but half the time he's talking to me like he met me forty-five minutes ago, telling me things about himself I've known for years, and asking me questions about myself that he should know the answers to already. Last night he asked me what my middle name was. God, I can't talk about it.

From Charades: when she was younger she was a frustrated mother, so she is pleased when her children act as is they don't remember

I realized that life was too short for anyone honestly and thoroughly to outgrow anything, but it was clear that some people were making more of an effort than others.

The speech she made was done in the back, alone, like little shoes cobbled by an elf: spider is to web as weaver is to blank. That one was hers. She was proud of that. Also, blank is to heartache as forest is to bench.

What I really felt was this: chopped down like a tree, a new feeling, and I was realizing that all new feelings from here on in would probably be bad ones. Surprises would no longer be good. And feelings might take on actual physical form, like those sad fish lips, a mouth speared into a gasping silence, or worse.

A veteran of the gender wars.

Her parents had gone from a couple who would be different, who would be better than anyone, who were determined to be better than most, to a couple who would be different because they were worse.

So I needed to be womanised. I was losing my sheen.

The whiskey was going down sweet.  That was what happened after a while, with no meal to assist — it had to do the food work on its own.  There.  We talked about death. That's talking about death?

To the right, the clouds have more shape and against the blue look like the figures of a Wedgwood dish. What a fine fucking bowl beneath which they have all been caught and asked to swim out their days! Look at it this way," people used to say to Mack. "Things could be worse"—a bumper sticker for a goldfish or a bug. And it wasn't wrong — it just wasn't the point.

She thought of gorillas, how when they had been kept too long alone in cages, they would smack each other in the head instead of mating.

There seemed nothing so true as a yellow tree.

Wonder about mistress courses, certification, resumes. Perhaps you are not really qualified.