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I did think reviewers were supposed to be polite about story collections - collections are rather delicate creatures in the literary environment - but not everybody got this memo, I guess.

Lorrie Moore

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Lorrie Moore
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: January 13
Faculty Member
Novelist
Writer
Glens Falls
New York
Stories
Delicate
Think
Supposed
Thinking
Guess
Memo
Creatures
Memos
Environment
Reviewers
Everybody
Polite
Story
Collections
Rather
Literary

More quotes by Lorrie Moore

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Things between us were dissolving like an ice cub in a glass: the smaller it got, the faster it disappeared.
Lorrie Moore
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You know, as fiction writers, if our instincts are off, we can't pay our bills.
Lorrie Moore
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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.
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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.
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It is like having a book out from the library. It is like constantly having a book out from the library.
Lorrie Moore
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People love gossip because it's slightly removed from actuality. It's a very literary thing... You can hear a great story, and it turns out that it's largely not true. Fiction writing is like gossip. It's not malicious gossip, but it's gossip.
Lorrie Moore
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
Lorrie Moore
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But that inadequacy, or feeling of inadequacy, never really goes away. You just have to trudge ahead in the rain, regardless.
Lorrie Moore
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The affectionate farce I make of him ignores the ways I feel his lack of love for me. But we are managing.
Lorrie Moore
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Plots are for dead people.
Lorrie Moore
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Perhaps we had at last reached that stage of intimacy that destroys intimacy.
Lorrie Moore
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Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or even if there is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more than ten minutes a day like sit-ups, they can make you thin
Lorrie Moore
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Nothing's a joke with me. It just all comes out like one.
Lorrie Moore
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An author's life is different, complex, and ongoing, while a character's remains frozen in one little story.
Lorrie Moore
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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