They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the deep human desire for companionship and comfort, especially in the face of death.
Lorrie Moore's quote encapsulates one of the most fundamental aspects of human existence: the need for connection and support. It emphasizes that, at the end of life, what truly matters is not material possessions or accolades, but having someone by your side who offers love and comfort during the most vulnerable moments. This deep bond underscores the significance of relationships and the warmth of human contact when faced with the inevitability of death.
In practice
In a eulogy, you might share this quote to highlight the importance of having loved ones around us in our final moments.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.'
She was unequal to anyone's wistfulness. She had made too little of her life. Its loneliness shamed her like a crime.
People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now.
It's so jarring to go from Baghdad to Cambridge, to go from a place where people are fighting and striving and dying to a place where the biggest concern is what kind of cheese to put in your sandwich.
Whatever's there to feel, feel itβthe riddance, the relief, the fright and freedom, the fear of forgetting, the dull ache of your own mortality. Get with someone you can trust with tears, with anger, and wonderment and utter silence.
Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.
It's absolutely fantastic. When I was a kid, my father was always trying to tell me how to be a man, and he said to me, I was maybe 9, and he said to me, 'Philip, whenever you take a nap, take your clothes off, put a blanket on you, and you're going to sleep better.' Well, as with everything, he was right. ... Then the best part of it is that when you wake up, for the first 15 seconds, you have no idea where you are. You're just alive. That's all you know. And it's bliss, it's absolute bliss.
When we were walking through the narrow alleys [of the Mathare Valley slums], it was literally impossible not to step in the raw sewage and the garbage alongside the little homes. But at the same time it was also impossible not to see the human vitality, the aspiration and the ambition of the people who live there.
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