Lorrie Moore
Lorrie Moore
Lorrie Mooreis an American fiction writer known mainly for her humorous and poignant short stories...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSelf-Help Author
Date of Birth13 January 1957
CityGlens Falls, NY
CountryUnited States of America
thinking stories environment
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.
character stories ongoing
An author's life is different, complex, and ongoing, while a character's remains frozen in one little story.
teaching thinking stories
Rather than a teaching tool, I think a novel is more of a witnessing entity. A witnessing entity? What is that? I just want the reader to step in and experience it as a story.
interesting stories comedy
Awkwardness is where tension is, and tension is where the story is. It's also where the comedy is, which I'm interested in; when it resolves it tends to resolve toward melancholy, a certain resignation, which I find interesting as well.
stories use narrative
If prose can cast a spell, we will listen to it no matter what it's saying. If a narrative uses language in a magical and enlivening way, we will listen to the story. But if the language doesn't cast a spell, we will listen to it only if it is telling us something that actually happened.
writing stories film
A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.
characters
I usually grow sick of my short-story characters and think, 'I never want to see you again.'
song love-is answers
Love is the answer, said the songs, and that's OK. It was OK, I supposed, as an answer. But no more than that. It was not a solution; it wasn't really even an answer, just a reply.
girlfriend school character
Start dating someone who is funny, someone who has what in high school you called a "really great sense of humor" and what now your creative writing class calls "self-contempt giving rise to comic form." Write down all of his jokes, but don't tell him you are doing this. Make up anagrams of his old girlfriend's name and name all of your socially handicapped characters with them. Tell him his old girlfriend is in all of your stories and then watch how funny he can be, see what a really great sense of humor he can have.
people writers
I'm a little harsh. When people say, 'I have writers block. What do you suggest?' I say, 'If you can't write, don't write. No one needs your writing. Don't torture yourself.'
academics books child destined dropped full graduate himself house insurance music school work
My father was the child of academics and was probably destined to become an academic himself but vetoed that idea. Bailed, dropped out of graduate school and just went to work for an insurance company. But the house was full of books and music and all of that.
list people
Some people get their books on the best-seller list and then they count the number of weeks, and I just never want to live that way.
adventures
Nabokov's adventures in language and style and naked braininess are really unparalleled.
adult constant financial life money nonstop problems time year
I've had nonstop financial problems my whole adult life. It's always been a constant balance, year to year: 'Where's the time? Where's the money?'