“She was afraid, and the afraid, she realized, sought opportunities for bravery in love,“ – Lorrie Moore, Like Life.
lorrie moore
“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,“ – Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs.
“Love, I realized, is something your spine memorized,” Lorrie Moore, Anagrams.
“Talent. I don’t have talent. I have willingness. What talent?” As a kid, she had always told the raunchiest jokes. As an adult, she could rip open a bone and speak out of it. Simple, clear. There was never anything to stop her. Why was there never anything to stop her? “I can stretch out the neck of a sweater to point at a freckle on my shoulder. Anyone who didn’t get enough attention in nursery school can do that. Talent is something else.”
– Lorrie Moore, in her short story “Willing” from her collection Birds of America.