They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.
Lorrie MooreRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Even familiar events can surprise us when they occur in reality.
This quote reflects on the nature of anticipation and the surprising impact of reality. It suggests that regardless of how much we expect an event to happen, the actual experience can still catch us off guard, similar to how an unexpected ghostly presence can evoke surprise even when we recognized the signs of its approach. This speaks to the complexity of human emotions and our relationship to time and expectation.
Themes
AnticipationSurpriseRealityFutureExpectation
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about embracing the moment, one might reference this quote.
More from Lorrie Moore
All quotes →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.
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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.
Lorrie MooreRead
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.
Lorrie MooreRead
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.'
Lorrie MooreRead
She was unequal to anyone's wistfulness. She had made too little of her life. Its loneliness shamed her like a crime.
Lorrie MooreRead
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