Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself.

- Lorrie Moore

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

- Lorrie Moore

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 …

- Lorrie Moore

If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.

- Lorrie Moore

It was part of being a girl in the '60s that you were creative.

- Lorrie Moore

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 fort…

- Lorrie Moore

Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.

- Lorrie Moore

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.

- Lorrie Moore

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 peopl…

- Lorrie Moore