They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.
Lorrie MooreRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on how individuals living together may feel disconnected despite being in close proximity, each living in their own unique and somewhat grotesque story.
In this quote, Lorrie Moore captures the essence of human relationships within a shared space, emphasizing that while individuals may occupy the same physical environment, they often exist in their personal narratives that can feel disjointed and absurd. The reference to Tennessee Williams highlights the intense emotionality and complexity of interactions, suggesting that these seemingly meaningless exchanges are filled with deeper, unexpressed significance that makes life compelling.
Themes
RelationshipsNarrativesDisconnectionGrotesqueExistence
In practice
Example use cases
In a book club discussion about Lorrie Moore's work, this quote can highlight the theme of individual narratives.
More from Lorrie Moore
All quotes βYou 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.
Lorrie MooreRead
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
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.
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
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Every wife who slaves to keep herself pretty, to cook her husband's favourite meals, to build up his pride and confidence in himself at the expense of his sense of reality, to be his closest and effectively his only friend, to encourage him to rejectthe consensus of opinionand find reassurance only in her arms is binding her mate to her with hoops of steel that will strangle them both.
Germaine GreerRead
I'd tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear
David Foster WallaceRead