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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.

-Lorrie Moore

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There Was The Usual

Lorrie Moore

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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.

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Writers Have No Real Area Of Expertise. They Are Merely Generalists With A Highly Inflamed Sense Of Punctuation.

[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.

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.

The Affectionate Farce I Make Of Him Ignores The Ways I Feel His Lack Of Love For Me. But We Are Managing.

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.

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

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.

Love Relationship

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

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

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.

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 Always Had The Sense With Her That She Didn't Suffer Fools Gladly But That Life Was Taking Great Pains To Show Her How.

A Funny Line Can Never Exist On Its Own. It Needs To Be Surrounded By Mood And Circumstances.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

The Compulsion To Read And Write - And It Seems To Me It Should Be, Even Must Be, A Compulsion - Is A Bit Of Mental Wiring The Species Has Selected, Over Time, In Order, As The Life Span Increases, To Keep Us Interested In Ourselves.

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!'

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

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.

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.

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?)

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.

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

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.

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

There Seemed Nothing So True As A Yellow Tree.

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!

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.

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

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

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Sometimes I Ask Myself If Writing Novels Is Even Respectable.

Most Things Good For Writing Are Bad For Life.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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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.

We Had Put Almost All Of Our Possessions In Storage, Which Was A Metaphor For Being Twenty, As Were So Many Things.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Plots Are For Dead People.

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.

I Wondered About The Half-life Of Regret.

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.

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

Killing Yourself

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Vivid Imagination

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

(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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Humor Comes From The Surprise Release Of Some Buried Tension.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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'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!

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

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

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

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.

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.

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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