#lorrie moore

[quotespile]

I missed him. Love, I realized, was something your spine memorized. There was nothing you could do about that.

Lorrie Moore, Anagrams

[nobeerreviews]

Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.

-- Lorrie Moore

(Stuttgart, Germany)

[litsnaps]

[intopermanence]

Where was she? In her own head, like a dream; in the bellows of her lungs. What was she? Perhaps a child. Perhaps a corpse. Perhaps a fern in the forest in the storm; a singing bird.

Lorrie Moore, from Birds of America: Stories: “Terrific Mother”

[fuckyeahhenleyreeves]

"How's the boring suburban life you left us for?"

the horsemen + grief

one thing i hoped that the movies would touch on to add on to the found family dynamics was the horsemen's grief that came with henley's leaving. they were together for a couple of years, living under the same roof, running from the international and local authorities as four of the world's most wanted—her leaving had to hurt. i wish we got to see their reaction to henley leaving. i wish we got to see their reaction when they heard that she left their family to start a new one, when they realized that she had moved on. i wish they touched on the difficulty of making up for her absence, of filling the hole she left. the heaviness of carrying on as three when they used to be four. the weight of accepting that as much she should have stayed, she was also free to go. the joy when they got her back. i wish we got a heart-to-heart instead of a couple of arguments and jokes, but i understand how hard it is to place that in the middle of the already fast pacing of the movies.

[herzogirl]

“who will run the frog hospital?” by lorrie moore

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

He felt no pain… Only the strangely pleasant airiness! Now he was in star-studded blackness, alone in the immensity of space and time!

* * * *

“I have done this before. Sometimes I do this. Sometimes as I’m drifting toward sleep, in the beginnings of that dissolution, I wonder where I am, when this is, and realize that at these moments I could be anywhere, anytime, for all I know: eight and napping in the trailer, my broken arm in a cast, or thirteen at night clutching a pillow to my neck, or twenty in the arms of my boyfriend, or twenty-seven in the arms of my husband, or thirty-three next to my imaginary daughter; at every place in the whole spinning shape that is my life, when I am falling asleep, I am the same person, the identical awareness, the same fuzzball of mind, the same muck of nerves, all along the line. I forage through my life and everywhere—there, there, and there—it is only me in it, the very same me, the same harmless lump, the same soggy weirdo, the same sleeping, breathing bun.” Lorrie Moore, Anagrams [Thanks Leopold Gursky]

[Alive On All Channels]

[ripeteeth]

"When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet. You walk differently. In store windows you don't recognize yourself; you are another woman, some crazy interior display lady in glasses stumbling frantic and preoccupied through mannequins. In public restrooms you sit dangerously flat against the toilet seat, a strange flesh sundae of despair and exhilaration, murmuring into your bluing thights: 'Hello, I'm Charlene. I'm a mistress.' It is like having a book out from the library. It is like constantly having a book out from the library."

Lorrie Moore, How to Be an Other Woman