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My New Apartment Might Be A Place Where There Are Lots Of Children. They Might Gather On My Porch To Play, And When I Step Out For Groceries, They Will Ask Me, "hi, Do You Have Any Kids?" And Then, "why Not, Don't You Like Kids?" "i Like Kids," I Will Explain. "i Like Kids Very Much." And When I Almost Run Over Them With My Car, In My Driveway, I Will Feel Many Different Things.

-Lorrie Moore

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My New Apartment Might

Lorrie Moore

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My New Apartment Might Be A Place Where There Are Lots Of Children. They Might Gather On My Porch To Play, And When I Step Out For Groceries, They Will Ask Me, "hi, Do You Have Any Kids?" And Then, "why Not, Don't You Like Kids?" "i Like Kids," I Will Explain. "i Like Kids Very Much." And When I Almost Run Over Them With My Car, In My Driveway, I Will Feel Many Different Things.

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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.

She Was Not Good On The Phone. She Needed The Face, The Pattern Of Eyes, Nose, Trembling Mouth... People Talking Were Meant To Look At A Face, The Disastrous Cupcake Of It, The Hide-and-seek Of The Heart Dashing Across. With A Phone, You Said Words, But You Never Watched Them Go In. You Saw Them Off At The Airport But Never Knew Whether There Was Anyone There To Greet Them When They Got Off The Plane.

You Are Unhappy Because You Believe In Such A Thing As Happy.

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Twenty-year-olds Have A Kind Of Emotional Idealism About Relationships And About The World That Enables Them To Say, 'no, You Lied To Me. Goodbye.' When They See Wickedness, They Walk Away.

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We Were In Dialogue That Was About Something Other Than What We Were Saying.

They Had, Finally, The Only Thing Anyone Really Wants In Life: Someone To Hold Your Hand When You Die.

No Matter That You Anticipate A Thing; You Get So Used To It As Part Of The Future That Its Actuality, Its Arrival, Its Force And Presence, Startles You, Takes You By Surprise, As Would A Ghost Suddenly Appearing In The Room Wearing Familiar Perfume And Boots.

Blasts From The Past Were Like The Rooms One Entered And Re-entered In Dreams: They Would Not Stay Nailed Down. When You Returned To Them, They Had Changed - They Suddenly Had More Space Or A Tilt Or A Door That Had Not Been There Before. New People Were Milling Around, The Floors Undulated, And The Sun Shone Newly, Strangely In The Windows, Or Through The Now Blasted-open Ceiling, Or Else It Shone Not At All, As If Having Fled The Sky.

All The Way Out I Listen To The Car Am Radio, Bad Lyrics Of Trailer Park Love, Gin And Tonic Love, Strobe Light Love, Lost And Found Love, Lost And Found And Lost Love, Lost And Lost And Lost Love—some People Were Having No Luck At All. The Dj Sounds Quick And Smooth And After-shaved, The Rest Of The World A Mess By Comparison.

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.

Adults Are Living Increasingly As Children: Completely In Their Imaginations. Reading Harry Potter While Every Newspaper In The Country Goes Out Of Business. They Know So Little That Is Real.

Nothing's A Joke With Me. It Just All Comes Out Like One.

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.

She Was Unequal To Anyone's Wistfulness. She Had Made Too Little Of Her Life. Its Loneliness Shamed Her Like A Crime.

To Me, Writing Is Much Freer Than Dancing. With Writing, You Could Do It Whenever You Wanted. You Didnt Have To Do Little Exercises And Stay In Shape. You Could Have Great Moments Of Inspiration That Advanced The Story. In Dance, Unless Youre Going To Choreograph Things Yourself, Youre At The Service Of Someone Else.

But That Inadequacy, Or Feeling Of Inadequacy, Never Really Goes Away. You Just Have To Trudge Ahead In The Rain, Regardless.

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 Write A Short Story, You Have To Be Able To Stay Up All Night.

I Want To Pretend There's Such A Thing As Requited Love. As The Endurance Of Love.

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.

Love Is A Fever," She Said. "and When You Come Out Of It You'll Discover Whether You've Been Lucky - Or Not.

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.

If I Had A Staff Of Even One Person, Or Could Tolerate A Small Amphetamine Habit, Or Entertain The Possibility Of Weekly Blood Transfusions, Or Had Been Married To Vera Nabokov, Or Had A Housespouse Of Even Minimal Abilities, A Literary Life Would Be Easier To Bring About. (in My Mind I See All Your Male Readers Rolling Their Eyes. But Your Female Ones - What Is That? Are They Nodding In Agreement? Are Their Fists In The Air?)

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Make A List Of All The Lovers You've Ever Had. Warren Lasher Ed "rubberhead" Catapano Charles Deats Or Keats Alfonse Tuck It In Your Pocket. Leave It Lying Around, Conspicuously. Somehow You Lose It. Make "mislaid" Jokes To Yourself. Make Another List.

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You Know, I'm Just A Very Boring, Not Very Funny Person In Person. I Don't Feel Pressured To Be Otherwise.

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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.

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My New Apartment Might Be A Place Where There Are Lots Of Children. They Might Gather On My Porch To Play, And When I Step Out For Groceries, They Will Ask Me, "hi, Do You Have Any Kids?" And Then, "why Not, Don't You Like Kids?" "i Like Kids," I Will Explain. "i Like Kids Very Much." And When I Almost Run Over Them With My Car, In My Driveway, I Will Feel Many Different Things.

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But Family Life Sometimes Had A Vortex, Like Weather. It Could Be Like A Tornado In A Quiet Zigzag: Get Close Enough And You Might See Within It A Spinning Eighteen-wheeler And A Woman.

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I Often Think That At The Center Of Me Is A Voice That At Last Did Split, A House In My Heart So Invaded With Other People And Their Speech, Friends I Believed I Was Devoted To, People Whose Lives I Can Simply Guess At Now, That It Gives Me The Impression I Am Simply A Collection Of Them, That They All Existed For Themselves, But Had Inadvertently Formed Me, Then Vanished. But, What: Should I Have Been Expected To Create My Own Self, Out Of Nothing, Out Of Thin, Thin Air And Alone?

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This Was Love, I Supposed, And Eventually I Would Come To Know It. Someday It Would Choose Me And I Would Come To Know Its Spell, For Long Stretches And Short, Two Times, Maybe Three, And Then Quite Probably It Would Choose Me Never Again.

Most Things Good For Writing Are Bad For Life.

Things Between Us Were Dissolving Like An Ice Cub In A Glass: The Smaller It Got, The Faster It Disappeared.

The Thing To Remember About Love Affairs," Says Simone, "is That They Are All Like Having Raccoons In Your Chimney." ... We Have Raccoons Sometimes In Our Chimney," Explains Simone. And Once We Tried To Smoke Them Out. We Lit A Fire, Knowing They Were There, But We Hoped The Smoke Would Cause Them To Scurry Out The Top And Never Come Back. Instead, They Caught On Fire And Came Crashing Down Into Our Living Room, All Charred And In Flames And Running Madly Around Until They Dropped Dead." Simone Swallows Some Wine. "love Affairs Are Like That," She Says. "they Are All Like That.

Love Drains You, Takes With It Much Of Your Blood Sugar And Water Weight. You Are Like A House Slowly Losing Its Electricity, The Fans Slowing, The Lights Dimming And Flickering; The Clocks Stop And Go And Stop.

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.

[t]he Normal And The Everyday Are Often Amazingly Unstoppable, And What Is Unimaginable Is The Cessation Of Them. The World Is Resilient, And, No Matter What Interruptions Occur, People So Badly Want To Return To Their Lives And Get On With Them. A Veneer Of Civilization Descends Quickly, Like A Shining Rain. Dust Is Settled.

You Couldn't Pretend You Had Lost Nothing... You Had To Begin There, Not Let Your Blood Freeze Over. If Your Heart Turned Away At This, It Would Turn Away At Something Greater, Then More And More Until Your Heart Stayed Averted, Immobile, Your Imagination Redistributed Away From The World And Back Only Toward The Bad Maps Of Yourself, The Sour Pools Of Your Own Pulse, Your Own Tiny, Mean, And Pointless Wants.

(such A Life)engaged Gross Quantities Of Hope And Despair And Set Them Wildly Side By Side, Like A Third World Country Of The Heart.

Perhaps One Would Be Wise When Young Even To Avoid Thinking Of Oneself As A Writer - For There's Something A Little Stopped And Satisfied, Too Healthy, In That. Better To Think Of Writing, Of What One Does As An Activity, Rather Than An Identity - To Write, I Write; We Write; To Keep The Calling A Verb Rather Than A Noun; To Keep Working At The Thing, At All Hours, In All Places, So That Your Life Does Not Become A Pose, A Pornography Of Wishing.

An Author's Life Is Different, Complex, And Ongoing, While A Character's Remains Frozen In One Little Story.

If One Loves Stories, Then One Would Naturally Love The Story Of The Story. Or The Story Behind The Story, Pick Your Preposition. It Does Seem To Me To Be A Kind Of Animal Impulse Almost, A Mammalian Curiosity. For A Reader To Wonder About The Autobiography In A Fiction May Be Completely Unavoidable And In Fact May Speak To The Success Of A Particular Narrative, Though It May Also Speak To Its Failure.

One Had To Build Shelters. One Had To Make Pockets And Live Inside Them.

I've Never Been To A Dinner Party Where Everyone At The Dinner Table Didn't Say Something Funny.

The Detachment Of The Artist Is Kind Of Creepy. It's Kind Of Rude, And Yet Really It's Where Art Comes From. It's Not The Same As Courage. It's Closer To Bad Manners Than To Courage. If You're Going To Be A Writer, You Basically Have To Say, 'this Is Just Who I Am'. There's A Certain Indefensibility About It. It's Not About Loving Your Community And Taking Care Of It — You're Not Attached To The Chamber Of Commerce. It's A Little Unsafe. You Have To Be Willing To Have Only Four Friends, Not 11.

Surrealism Could Not Be Made Up. It Was The Very Electricity Of The Real.

A Short Story Is A Love Affair, A Novel Is A Marriage. A Short Story Is A Photograph; A Novel Is A Film.

There Was The Usual Dreaminess, I Suppose. Also A Shyness That Caused Me - And Others - To Notice That I Could Express Myself Better By Writing Than By Speaking. This Is Typical Of Many Writers, I Think. What Is A Drawback In Childhood Is An Asset To A Literary Life. Not Being Fluent On One’s Feet Sends One To The Page And A Habit Is Born.

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.

Once Love Had Seemed Like Magic. Now It Seemed Like Tricks.

Every Arrangement In Life Carried With It The Sadness, The Sentimental Shadow, Of Its Not Being Something Else, But Only Itself.

But I Believed In Starting Over. There Was Finally, I Knew, Only Rupture And Hurt And Falling Short Between All Persons, But, Shirley, The Best Revenge Was To Turn Your Life Into A Small Gathering Of Miracles. If I Could Not Be Anchored And Profound, I Would Try, At Least, To Be Kind.

Plots Are For Dead People.

If God Speaks Through Burning Bushes, Let's Burn Bush And Listen To What God Says.

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

Forgiveness Lives Alone And Far Off Down The Road, But Bitterness And Art Are Close, Gossipy Neighbors, Sharing The Same Clothesline, Hanging Out Their Things, Getting Their Laundry Confused.

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.

I've Come To Realize That Life, While Being Everything, Is Also Strangely Not Much. Except When The Light Shines On It A Different Way And Then You Realize It's A Lot After All!

Start Dating Someone Who Is Funny, Someone Who Has What In High School You Called A "really Great Sense Of Humor" And What Now Your Creative Writing Class Calls "self-contempt Giving Rise To Comic Form." Write Down All Of His Jokes, But Don't Tell Him You Are Doing This. Make Up Anagrams Of His Old Girlfriend's Name And Name All Of Your Socially Handicapped Characters With Them. Tell Him His Old Girlfriend Is In All Of Your Stories And Then Watch How Funny He Can Be, See What A Really Great Sense Of Humor He Can Have.

There Seemed Nothing So True As A Yellow Tree.

She Had, Without Realizing It At The Time, Learned To Follow Nick's Gaze, Learned To Learn His Lust...his Desires Remained Memorized Within Her. She Looked At The Attractive Women He Would Look At...she Had Become Him: She Longed For These Women. But She Was Also Herself, And So She Despised Them. She Lusted After Them, But She Also Wanted To Beat Them Up. A Rapist. She Had Become A Rapist, Driving To Work In A Car.

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!'

I Missed Him. Love, I Realized, Was Something Your Spine Memorized. There Was Nothing You Could Do About That.

She Was Afraid, And The Afraid, She Realized, Sought Opportunities For Bravery In Love.

The Problem With A Beautiful Woman Is That She Makes Everyone Around Her Feel Hopelessly Masculine, Which If You’re Already Male To Begin With Poses No Particular Problem. But If You’re Anyone Else, Your Whole Sexual Identity Gets Dragged Into The Principal’s Office: “so What’s This I Hear About You Prancing Around, Masquerading As A Woman?” You Are Answerless. You Are Sitting On Your Hands. You Are Praying For Your Breasts To Grow, Your Hair To Perk Up.

An Agony. The Exit Like The Entrance - But Reserved. A Palindrome: Gut-tug.

Don't Make Your Own Life Your Project In Your Own Life: Total Waste Of Time.

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.

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!

I Wondered About The Half-life Of Regret.

Shopping For Clothes Is Like Masturbation - Everyone Does It, But It Isn't Very Interesting And Therefore Should Be Done Alone, In An Embarrassed Fashion, And Never Be The Topic Of Party Conversation.

I Don't Care If I'm A Fish, I Still Want A Bicycle.

This Was My Modest Dream Come True: Unambitious Flight. The Kind That Never Even Got High Enough For A View.

Basically, I Realized I Was Living In That Awful Stage Of Life Between Twenty-six To And Thirty-seven Known As Stupidity. It's When You Don't Know Anything, Not Even As Much As You Did When You Were Younger, And You Don't Even Have A Philosophy About All The Things You Don't Know, The Way You Did When You Were Twenty Or Would Again When You Were Thirty-eight.

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.

If You Look At Most Womens Writing, Women Writers Will Describe Women Differently From The Way Male Writers Describe Women. The Details That Go Into A Woman Writers Description Of A Female Character Are, Perhaps, A Little More Judgmental. Theyre Looking For Certain Things, Because They Know What Women Do To Look A Certain Way.

She Smiled At Him, With Longing. 'where Do You Live,' She Asked, 'and How Do I Get There?

Sometimes I Ask Myself If Writing Novels Is Even Respectable.

Writing Is Both The Excursion Into And The Excursion Out Of One's Life. That Is The Queasy Paradox Of The Artistic Life. It Is The Thing That, Like Love, Removes One Both Painfully And Deliciously From The Ordinary Shape Of Existence. It Joins Another Queasy Paradox: That Life Is An Amazing, Hilarious, Blessed Gift And That It Is Also Intolerable.

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.

It Was Part Of Being A Girl In The '60s That You Were Creative.

Editing Is Just Ongoing. I Don't Count Drafts, Or Know What Would Fully Constitute A Draft. But I Try To Fix As I Go. And There's Always More To Fix.

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.

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.

It Was Not Miserable - Often I Did Not Miss Her At All. But There Was Sometimes A Quick, Sinking Ache When I Walked In The Door And Saw She Was Not There. Twice, However, I'd Felt The Same Sinking Feeling When She Was.

Sinking Feeling

It Is Like Having A Book Out From The Library. It Is Like Constantly Having A Book Out From The Library.

All The World's A Stage We're Going Through.

I Don't Have A Love Life. I Have A Like Life.

What Little Reality Television I've Seen Seems To Be About Economic Desperation. Like The Marathon Dancing Of The Great Depression, Which Should Give Us Pause. People Willing To Eat Flies And Worms For A Sum That Is Less Than The Weekly Paycheck Of The Show's Producer. I Haven't Seen "reality Television" That Is Other Than This Kind Of Painful, Sadistic Exploitation Of Fit Young People Looking For Agents.

A Novel Is A Daily Labor Over A Period Of Years. A Novel Is A Job. But A Story Can Be Like A Mad, Lovely Visitor, With Whom You Spend A Rather Exciting Weekend.

This Is What Happened In Love. One Of You Cried A Lot And Then Both Of You Grew Sarcastic.

I've Accrued A Kind Of Patience, I Believe, Loosely Like Change.

People Will Do Anything, Anything, For A Really Nice Laugh.

Later I Would Come To Believe That Erotic Ties Were All A Spell, A Temporary Psychosis, Even A Kind Of Violence, Or At Least They Coexisted With These States.

I Had Never Feared Insomnia Before--like Prison, Wouldn't It Just Give You More Time To Read?

Pleasantness Was The Machismo Of The Midwest. There Was Something Athletic About It. You Flexed Your Face Into A Smile And Let It Hover There Like The Dare Of A Cat.

I Count Too Heavily On Birthdays, Though I Know I Shouldn't. Inevitably I Begin To Assess My Life By Them, Figure Out How I'm Doing By How Many People Remember; It's Like The Old Fantasy Of Attending Your Own Funeral: You Get To See Who Your Friends Are, Get To See Who Shows Up.

Who Your Friends Are

What Do I Do When Writing Isn't Going Well? Well, I Don't Write - Which Is Symptom, Cure, And Cause. And Then Sometimes I Just Tell Myself, As I'm Writing, "i'll Fix It Later." And Sometimes It's True, I Do.

I Don't Think Of Any Sentence As A "one-liner", But I Do Pay Attention To How People Actually Speak When They Are Being Funny. Rhythm Is Key.

The People In This House, I Felt, And I Included Myself, Were Like Characters Each From A Different Grim And Gruesome Fairy Tale. None Of Us Was In The Same Story. We Were All Grotesques, And Self-riveted, But In Separate Narratives, And So Our Interactions Seemed Weird And Richly Meaningless, Like The Characters In A Tennessee Williams Play, With Their Bursting Unimportant, But Spell-bindingly Mad Speeches.

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.

I Wished For Eternal And Intriguing Muteness. I Would Be The Mysterious Dumb Girl, The Enigmatic Elf. The Human Voice No Longer Interested Me.

You Know, As Fiction Writers, If Our Instincts Are Off, We Can't Pay Our Bills.

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