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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.

-Lorrie Moore

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The Detachment Of The

Lorrie Moore

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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.

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

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Who Your Friends Are

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

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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.

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

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.

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

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(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.

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Love Is Art, Not Truth. It’s Like Painting Scenery.

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

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.

Those Are The Love Killers. They Love You And Then They Kill You. They're From Another Planet. Supposedly.

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.

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

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.

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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.

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.

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Awkwardness Is Where Tension Is, And Tension Is Where The Story Is. It's Also Where The Comedy Is, Which I'm Interested In; When It Resolves It Tends To Resolve Toward Melancholy, A Certain Resignation, Which I Find Interesting As Well.

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.

What Makes Humans Human Is Precisely That They Do Not Know The Future. That Is Why They Do The Fateful And Amusing Things They Do: Who Can Say How Anything Will Turn Out? Therein Lies The Only Hope For Redemption, Discovery, And-let’s Be Frank—fun, Fun, Fun! There Might Be Things People Will Get Away With. And Not Just Motel Towels. There Might Be Great Illicit Loves, Enduring Joy, Faith-shaking Accidents With Farm Machinery. But You Have To Not Know In Order To See What Stories Your Life’s Efforts Bring You. The Mystery Is All.

Humor Comes From The Surprise Release Of Some Buried Tension.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Perhaps We Had At Last Reached That Stage Of Intimacy That Destroys Intimacy.

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.

It Was Like The Classic Scene In The Movies Where One Lover Is On The Train And One Is On The Platform And The Train Starts To Pull Away, And The Lover On The Platform Begins To Trot Along And Then Jog And Then Sprint And Then Gives Up Altogether As The Train Speeds Irrevocably Off. Except In This Case I Was All The Parts: I Was The Lover On The Platform, I Was The Lover On The Train. And I Was Also The Train.

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

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