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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.

-Lorrie Moore

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The People In This

Lorrie Moore

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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.

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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.

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

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.

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

Usually She Ordered A Cup Of Coffee And A Cup Of Tea, As Well As A Brownie, Propping Up Her Sadness With Chocolate And Caffeine So That It Became An Anxiety.

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

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

For Love To Last, You Had To Have Illusions Or Have No Illusions At All. But You Had To Stick To One Or The Other. It Was The Switching Back And Forth That Endangered Things.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes I Ask Myself If Writing Novels Is Even Respectable.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[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.

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.

That Is What Is Wrong With Cold People. Not That They Have Ice In Their Souls - We All Have A Bit Of That - But That They Insist Every Word And Deed Mirror That Ice. They Never Learn The Beauty Or Value Of Gesture. The Emotional Necessity. For Them, It Is All Honesty Before Kindness, Truth Before Art. Love Is Art, Not Truth. It's Like Painting Scenery.

As The Most Recently Arrived To Earthly Life, Children Can Seem In Lingering Possession Of Some Heavenly Lidless Eye.

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

I Always Do The Wrong. I Do The Wrong Thing So Much That The Times I Actually Do The Right Thing Stand Out So Brightly In My Memory That I Forget I Always Do The Wrong Thing.

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.

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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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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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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

If One Publishes, Then One Is Creating A Public Record Of Learning To Write.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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

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One Should Never Turn One's Back On A Vivid Imagination.

Vivid Imagination

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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.

I Would Never Understand Photography, The Sneaky, Murderous Taxidermy Of It.

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

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.

If You're Suicidal, And You Don't Actually Kill Yourself, You Become Known As 'wry.

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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?)

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

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

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.

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

I Love Plays. Even Bad Ones. I Like The Fact That Actual Live, Breathing People Are Standing Before You In Tense Situations That You Are Not Personally Responsible For.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Surely That Was Why Faith Had Been Invented: To Raise Teenagers Without Dying. Although Of Course It Was Also Why Death Was Invented: To Escape Teenagers Altogether.

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.

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.

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.

If I Retain Any Freshness Of Approach, It's By Going Slowly Having Long Intervals Between Finished Projects.

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

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.

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

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.

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!'

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

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.

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

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.

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

Humor Comes From The Surprise Release Of Some Buried Tension.

After A Childhood Of Hungering To Be An Adult, My Hunger Had Passed. Unexpected Fates Had Begun To Catch My Notice. These Middle-aged Women Seemed Very Tired To Me, As If Hope Had Been Wrung Out Of Them And Replaced With A Deathly, Walking Sort Of Sleep.

I Wondered About The Half-life Of Regret.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Tried Not To Think About My Life. I Did Not Have Any Good Solid Plans For It Long-term - No Bad Plans Either, No Plans At All - And The Lostness Of That, Compared With The Clear Ambitions Of My Friends (marriage, Children, Law School), Sometimes Shamed Me. Other Times In My Mind I Defended Such A Condition As Morally And Intellectually Superior - My Life Was Open And Ready And Free - But That Did Not Make It Less Lonely.

I Don’t Go Back And Look At My Early Work, Because The Last Time I Did, Many Years Ago, It Left Me Cringing. If One Publishes, Then One Is Creating A Public Record Of Learning To Write.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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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