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Better to think of writing, of what one does, as an activity, rather than an identity to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun.
Lorrie Moore
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Lorrie Moore
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: January 13
Faculty Member
Novelist
Writer
Glens Falls
New York
Doe
Verb
Better
Nouns
Writing
Verbs
Think
Calling
Thinking
Identity
Activity
Rather
Keep
Noun
More quotes by Lorrie Moore
Humor comes from the surprise release of some buried tension.
Lorrie Moore
I do have people in mind when I write. I don't know precisely who they are, however, or how many of them there are.
Lorrie Moore
No matter what terror the earth could produce - winds, seas - a person could produce the same, lived with the same, lived with all that mixed-up nature swirling inside, every bit. There was nothing as complex in the world - no flower or stone - as a single hello from a human being.
Lorrie Moore
One had to build shelters. One had to make pockets and live inside them.
Lorrie Moore
Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.
Lorrie Moore
I always had the sense with her that she didn't suffer fools gladly but that life was taking great pains to show her how.
Lorrie Moore
I want to pretend there's such a thing as requited love. As the endurance of love.
Lorrie Moore
Women now were told not to settle for second best, told that they deserved better, but at a time, it seemed, when there was so much less to go around.
Lorrie Moore
When you find out who you are, you will no longer be innocent. That will be sad for others to see. All that knowledge will show on your face and change it. But sad only for others, not for yourself. You will feel you have a kind of wisdom, very mistaken, but a mistake of some power to you and so you will sadly treasure it and grow it.
Lorrie Moore
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.
Lorrie Moore
It is like having a book out from the library. It is like constantly having a book out from the library.
Lorrie Moore
I don’t go back and look at my early work, because the last time I did, many years ago, it left me cringing. If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.
Lorrie Moore
An author's life is different, complex, and ongoing, while a character's remains frozen in one little story.
Lorrie Moore
An agony. The exit like the entrance - but reserved. A palindrome: gut-tug.
Lorrie Moore
Perhaps she drives men away. Perhaps, without even being able to help herself, she just puts men into her ill-tempered car and drives them off: to quarries, dumps, small anonymous bodies of water.
Lorrie Moore
A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph a novel is a film.
Lorrie Moore
When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet.
Lorrie Moore
I feared Sarah was one of those women who instead of laughing said, That's funny, or instead of smiling said, That's interesting, or instead of saying, You are a stupid blithering idiot, said, Well I think it's a little more complicated than that.
Lorrie Moore
I just don't want you to feel uncomfortable about this, he says. Say: Hey. I am a very cool person. I am tough. Show him your bicep.
Lorrie Moore
Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.
Lorrie Moore
