Lorrie Moore
An agony. The exit like the entrance - but reserved. A palindrome: gut-tug.Collection: Heartbreak
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.Collection: Boots
I want to pretend there's such a thing as requited love. As the endurance of love.Collection: Endurance
We had put almost all of our possessions in storage, which was a metaphor for being twenty, as were so many things.Collection: Twenties
I wished for eternal and intriguing muteness. I would be the Mysterious Dumb Girl, the Enigmatic Elf. The human voice no longer interested me.Collection: Girl
This was love, I supposed, and eventually I would come to know it. Someday it would choose me and I would come to know its spell, for long stretches and short, two times, maybe three, and then quite probably it would choose me never again.Collection: Two
Women now were told not to settle for second best, told that they deserved better, but at a time, it seemed, when there was so much less to go around.Collection: Second Best
A funny line can never exist on its own. It needs to be surrounded by mood and circumstances.Collection: Needs
If I retain any freshness of approach, it's by going slowly having long intervals between finished projects.Collection: Long
I did think reviewers were supposed to be polite about story collections - collections are rather delicate creatures in the literary environment - but not everybody got this memo, I guess.Collection: Thinking