Abby began to think that all the beauty and ugliness and turbulence one found scattered through nature, one could also find in people themselves, all collected there, all together in a single place. No matter what terror or loveliness the earth could produce-wind, seas- a person could produce the same, lived with the same, lived with all that mixed-up nature swirling inside, every bit. There was nothing as complex in the world-no flower or stone- as a single hello from a human being.

— Lorrie Moore

Aloneness was like riding a bike. At gunpoint. With the gun in your own hand. Aloneness was the air in your tires, the wind in your hair. You didn't have to go looking for it with open arms. With open arms, you fell off the bike: I was drinking my wine too quickly.

— Lorrie Moore

And all love that had overtaken her would have to be a memory, a truck on the interstate roaring up from the left, a thing she must let pass.

— Lorrie Moore

Anyone who's read all of Proust plus The Man without Qualities is bound t be missing out on a few other titles.

— 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

Back at home, days later, feel cranky and tired. Sit on the couch and tell him he's stupid. That you bet he doesn't know who Coriolanus is. That since you moved in you've noticed he rarely reads. He will give you a hurt, hungry-to-learn look, with his James Cagney eyes. He will try to kiss you. Turn your head. Feel suffocated. (from "How")

— Lorrie Moore

Bucks, doe — thank God everything boils down to money, I always say."" During mating season the doe constructs a bed for herself, and then she urinates all around the outside of it. That's how she gets her mate."" So that's it," murmured Odette. "I was always peeing in the bed.

— Lorrie Moore

Bummer,' said Ira, his new word for "I must remain as neutral as possible" and "Your mother's a whore.

— Lorrie Moore

But it would be like going to Heaven and not finding any of your friends there. Her life would go all beatific and empty in the eyes.

— Lorrie Moore

But that inadequacy, or feeling of inadequacy, never really goes away. You just have to trudge ahead in the rain, regardless.

— Lorrie Moore