Quotes from Lorrie Moore

I had never feared insomnia before--like prison, wouldn't it just give you more time to read?

If you record the world honestly, there's no way people can stop being funny. A lot of fiction writing doesn't get that idea, as if to acknowledge it would trivialize the story or trivialize human nature, when in fact human nature is reduced and falsified if the comic aspects are not included.

I'm very interested in what people will do for money. Money: it's timeless.

I'm a little harsh. When people say, 'I have writers block. What do you suggest?' I say, 'If you can't write, don't write. No one needs your writing. Don't torture yourself.'

You chose love like a belief, a faith, a place, a box for one's heart to knock against like a spook in the house.

There seemed nothing so true as a yellow tree.

Personally I've never put much store by honesty- I mean how can you trust a word whose first letter you don't even pronounce

Love is the answer, said the songs, and that's OK. It was OK, I supposed, as an answer. But no more than that. It was not a solution; it wasn't really even an answer, just a reply.

I love plays. Even bad ones. I like the fact that actual live, breathing people are standing before you in tense situations that you are not personally responsible for.

The affectionate farce I make of him ignores the ways I feel his lack of love for me. But we are managing.

I usually grow sick of my short-story characters and think, 'I never want to see you again.'

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

My father was the child of academics and was probably destined to become an academic himself but vetoed that idea. Bailed, dropped out of graduate school and just went to work for an insurance company. But the house was full of books and music and all of that.

Love is art, not truth. It's like painting scenery.

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

I missed him. Love, I realized, was something your spine memorized. There was nothing you could do about that.

Once love had seemed like magic. Now it seemed like tricks.

Love is a fever," she said. "And when you come out of it you'll discover whether you've been lucky - or not.

I don't have a love life. I have a like life.

I want to pretend there's such a thing as requited love. As the endurance of love.

If you look at most women's writing, women writers will describe women differently from the way male writers describe women. The details that go into a woman writer's description of a female character are, perhaps, a little more judgmental. They're looking for certain things, because they know what women do to look a certain way.

I don't care if I'm a fish, I still want a bicycle.

Rather than a teaching tool, I think a novel is more of a witnessing entity. A witnessing entity? What is that? I just want the reader to step in and experience it as a story.

To me, writing is much freer than dancing. With writing, you could do it whenever you wanted. You didn't have to do little exercises and stay in shape. You could have great moments of inspiration that advanced the story. In dance, unless you're going to choreograph things yourself, you're at the service of someone else.