Lorrie Moore

“How quickly bodies came to love each other, promise themselves to each other always, without asking permission. From the mind! If only she could give up her mind, let her heart swell, inflamed, her brain stepping out for whole days, whole seasons, her work shrinking to limericks.”

“Anyone who's read all of Proust plus The Man withour Qualities is bound t be missing out on a few other titles.”

“Sometimes I ask myself if writing novels is even respectable.”

“The passive voice could always be used to obscure blame.”

“Bucks, doe — thank God everything boils down to money, I always say.""During mating season the doe constructs a bed for herself, and then she urinates all around the outside of it. That's how she gets her mate.""So that's it," murmured Odette. "I was always peeing in the bed.”

“She knew there were only small joys in life--the big ones were too complicated to be joys when you got all through--and once you realized that, it took a lot of the pressure off.”

“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.”

“I was Baptist and had always prayed, in a damp squint, for things not to happen. Sils was a Catholic, and so she prayed for things to happen, for things to come true. She prayed for love here and now. I prayed for no guns.”

“I don't sit down to write a funny story. Every single thing I sit down to write is meant to be sad.”

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

“This lunge at moral fastidiousness was something she'd noticed a lot in people around here. They were not good people. They were not kind. But they recycled their newspapers!”

“When I was in graduate school, I had a teacher who said to me, 'Women writers should marry somebody who thinks writing is cute. Because if they really realised what writing was, they would run a mile.'”

“I'm surrounded by music; I always was when I was growing up and continue to be. And I love music. And when I imagine a fictional world, I imagine there's music in it for those people, too.”

“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”

“I had one elegantly folded cookie—a short paper nerve baked in an ear.”

“It was part of being a girl in the '60s that you were creative.”

“I mean …” Dennis was saying, looking pointedly at Mave, but Mave was watching the waitress approach. Oh, life, oh, sweet, forgiven for the ice … He grabbed Mave’s wrist. There was always an emergency. And then there was love. And then there was another emergency. That was the sandwiching of it. Emergency. Love. Emergency. “I mean, it’s not as if you’ve been dozing off,” Dennis was saying, his voice reaching her now, high and watery. “I mean, correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but I don’t think I’ve been having this conversation alone.” He tightened his grip. “I mean, have I?”

“I think women do write politically all the time. Margaret Atwood does; Doris Lessing does.”

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

“Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.”