Happy Birthday, Lorrie Moore, born 13 January 1957.
Quotes
- Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.
- I don’t sit down to write a funny story. Every single thing I sit down to write is meant to be sad.
- If you look at most women’s writing, women writers will describe women differently from the way male writers describe women. The details that go into a woman writer’s description of a female character are, perhaps, a little more judgemental. They’re looking for certain things, because they know what women do to look a certain way.
- I’m not sure that niceness is what we should promote in writers.
- A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.
- Literature, of course, is not a contest.
- I’m a little harsh. When people say, ‘I have writer’s block. What do you suggest?’ I say, ‘If you can’t write, don’t write. No one needs your writing. Don’t torture yourself.’
- Humour comes from the surprise release of some buried tension.
- The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, ‘Write something you’d never show your mother or father.’ And you know what they say? ‘I could never do that!’
- Writing has to be an obsession – it’s only for those who say, ‘I’m not going to do anything else.’
- I’m very interested in what people will do for money. Money: it’s timeless.
- If one loves stories, then one would naturally love the story of the story. Or the story behind the story, pick your preposition.
- All the world’s a stage we’re going through.
Lorrie Moore is an American fiction writer known mainly for her humorous and poignant short stories. She is the author of Birds of America: Stories and A Gate at the Stairs.
Photograph by Zane Williams, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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