Quote

If prose can cast a spell, we will listen to it no matter what it's saying. If a narrative uses language in a magical and enlivening way, we will listen to the story. But if the language doesn't cast a spell, we will listen to it only if it is telling us something that actually happened.

Lorrie Moore

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lorrie Moore
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: January 13
Faculty Member
Novelist
Writer
Glens Falls
New York
Way
Story
Prose
Actually
Cast
Language
Casts
Use
Narrative
Enlivening
Doesn
Telling
Spell
Stories
Listen
Spells
Matter
Saying
Magical
Something
Happened
Uses

More quotes by Lorrie Moore

Image
Humor comes from the surprise release of some buried tension.
Lorrie Moore
Image
But that inadequacy, or feeling of inadequacy, never really goes away. You just have to trudge ahead in the rain, regardless.
Lorrie Moore
Image
When she packed up to leave, she knew that she was saying goodbye to something important, which was not that bad, in a way, because it meant that at least you had said hello to it to begin with.
Lorrie Moore
Image
Everything one reads is nourishment of some sort - good food or junk food - and one assumes it all goes in and has its way with your brain cells.
Lorrie Moore
Image
If you're suicidal, and you don't actually kill yourself, you become known as 'wry.
Lorrie Moore
Image
Nothing's a joke with me. It just all comes out like one.
Lorrie Moore
Image
The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, 'Write something you'd never show your mother or father. And you know what they say? I could never do that!'
Lorrie Moore
Image
Don't make your own life your project in your own life: total waste of time.
Lorrie Moore
Image
She hadn't been given the proper tools to make a real life with, she decided, that was it. She'd been given a can of gravy and a hairbrush and told, There you go. -- Willing
Lorrie Moore
Image
I had never feared insomnia before--like prison, wouldn't it just give you more time to read?
Lorrie Moore
Image
An author's life is different, complex, and ongoing, while a character's remains frozen in one little story.
Lorrie Moore
Image
Her life her life had taken on the shape of a terrible mistake. She hadn't been given the proper tools to make a real life with, she decided, that was it. She'd been given a can of gravy and a hair-brush and told, There you go. She'd stood there for years, blinking and befuddled, brushing the can with the brush.
Lorrie Moore
Image
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.
Lorrie Moore
Image
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
Image
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
Image
All the world's a stage we're going through.
Lorrie Moore
Image
The affectionate farce I make of him ignores the ways I feel his lack of love for me. But we are managing.
Lorrie Moore
Image
Love is art, not truth. It’s like painting scenery.
Lorrie Moore
Image
You emptied the top rack of the dishwasher but not the bottom, so the clean dishes have gotten all mixed up with the dirty ones - and now you want to have sex?
Lorrie Moore
Image
It is like having a book out from the library. It is like constantly having a book out from the library.
Lorrie Moore