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d2025d2
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All the world's a stage we're going through.
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Lorrie Moore |
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8729670
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This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic.
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relationships
sarcasm
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Lorrie Moore |
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a420b32
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One had to build shelters. One had to make pockets and live inside them.
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shelter
protect
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Lorrie Moore |
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d3c2751
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That is what is wrong with cold people. Not that they have ice in their souls - we all have a bit of that - but that they insist every word and deed mirror that ice. They never learn the beauty or value of gesture. The emotional necessity. For them, it is all honesty before kindness, truth before art. Love is art, not truth. It's like painting scenery.
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Lorrie Moore |
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7faf08d
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I count too heavily on birthdays, though I know I shouldn't. Inevitably I begin to assess my life by them, figure out how I'm doing by how many people remember; it's like the old fantasy of attending your own funeral: You get to see who your friends are, get to see who shows up.
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Lorrie Moore |
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9cd1fae
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When she packed up to leave, she knew that she was saying goodbye to something important, which was not that bad, in a way, because it meant that at least you had said hello to it to begin with...
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Lorrie Moore |
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eeda5c0
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They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.
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relationships
life
love
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Lorrie Moore |
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c7b141c
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I missed him. Love, I realized, was something your spine memorized. There was nothing you could do about that.
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Lorrie Moore |
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fea4638
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Guns, she was reminded then, were not for girls. They were for boys. They were invented by boys. They were invented by boys who had never gotten over their disappointment that accompanying their own orgasm there wasn't a big sound.
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sex
men
humor
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Lorrie Moore |
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99febf5
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She was not good on the phone. She needed the face, the pattern of eyes, nose, trembling mouth... People talking were meant to look at a face, the disastrous cupcake of it, the hide-and-seek of the heart dashing across. With a phone, you said words, but you never watched them go in. You saw them off at the airport but never knew whether there was anyone there to greet them when they got off the plane.
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Lorrie Moore |
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dfc7cf8
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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.
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Lorrie Moore |
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6d21bff
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Love drains you, takes with it much of your blood sugar and water weight. You are like a house slowly losing its electricity, the fans slowing, the lights dimming and flickering; the clocks stop and go and stop.
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Lorrie Moore |
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14f4966
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Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself.
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Lorrie Moore |
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3b00166
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The thing to remember about love affairs," says Simone, "is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney." ...
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Lorrie Moore |
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634481d
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Usually she ordered a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, as well as a brownie, propping up her sadness with chocolate and caffeine so that it became an anxiety.
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sadness
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Lorrie Moore |
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98fc68c
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I would never understand photography, the sneaky, murderous taxidermy of it.
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Lorrie Moore |
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034de0a
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It was like the classic scene in the movies where one lover is on the train and one is on the platform and the train starts to pull away, and the lover on the platform begins to trot along and then jog and then sprint and then gives up altogether as the train speeds irrevocably off. Except in this case I was all the parts: I was the lover on the platform, I was the lover on the train. And I was also the train.
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Lorrie Moore |
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59439bf
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Basically, I realized I was living in that awful stage of life between twenty-six to and thirty-seven known as . It's when you don't know anything, not even as much as you did when you were younger, and you don't even have a philosophy about all the things you don't know, the way you did when you were twenty or would again when you were thirty-eight.
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Lorrie Moore |
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1df041f
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No matter what terror the earth could produce - winds, 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.
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Lorrie Moore |
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b30aba7
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Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.
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hierarchy
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Lorrie Moore |
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60e2042
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It is like having a book out from the library. It is like constantly having a book out from the library.
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Lorrie Moore |
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a90e090
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She was afraid, and the afraid, she realized, sought opportunities for bravery in love.
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love
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Lorrie Moore |
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b46dc56
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I often think that at the center of me is a voice that at last did split, a house in my heart so invaded with other people and their speech, friends I believed I was devoted to, people whose lives I can simply guess at now, that it gives me the impression I am simply a collection of them, that they all existed for themselves, but had inadvertently formed me, then vanished. But, what: Should I have been expected to create my own self, out of..
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who-will-run-the-frog-hospital
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Lorrie Moore |
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8cfecfe
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There were moments bristling with deadness, when she looked out at her life and went, " " Or worse, feeling interrupted and tired, "Wha--?"
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Lorrie Moore |
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8f929e8
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Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or even if there is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more than ten minutes a day; like sit-ups, they can make you thin
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Lorrie Moore |
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3498cf1
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Make a list of all the lovers you've ever had. Warren Lasher Ed "Rubberhead" Catapano Charles Deats or Keats
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Lorrie Moore |
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16ac7d2
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Her life] had taken on the shape of a terrible mistake. She hadn't been given the proper tools to make a real life with, she decided, that was it. She'd been given a can of gravy and a hair-brush and told, "There you go." She'd stood there for years, blinking and befuddled, brushing the can with the brush."
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Lorrie Moore |
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dae22f8
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A woman had to choose her own particular unhappiness carefully. That was the only happiness in life: to choose the best unhappiness. An unwise move, good God, you could squander everything.
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Lorrie Moore |
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bf473f2
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When you find out who you are, you will no longer be innocent. That will be sad for others to see. All that knowledge will show on your face and change it. But sad only for others, not for yourself. You will feel you have a kind of wisdom, very mistaken, but a mistake of some power to you and so you will sadly treasure it and grow it.
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Lorrie Moore |
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b6ade6b
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But I believed in starting over. There was finally, I knew, only rupture and hurt and falling short between all persons, but, Shirley, the best revenge was to turn your life into a small gathering of miracles. If I could not be anchored and profound, I would try, at least, to be kind.
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Lorrie Moore |
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4c7215f
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After four movies, three concerts, and two-and-a-half museums, you sleep with him. It seems the right number of cultural events.
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Lorrie Moore |
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dd0fa01
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I tried not to think about my life. I did not have any good solid plans for it long-term - no bad plans either, no plans at all - and the lostness of that, compared with the clear ambitions of my friends (marriage, children, law school), sometimes shamed me. Other times in my mind I defended such a condition as morally and intellectually superior - my life was open and ready and free - but that did not make it less lonely.
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Lorrie Moore |
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1db1f1a
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Wake up one morning with a man you had thought you'd spend your life with, and realize, a rock in your gut, that you don't even like him. Spend a weepy afternoon in his bathroom, not coming out when he knocks. You can no longer trust your affections. People and places you think you love may be people and places you hate.
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Lorrie Moore |
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593cbf2
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For love to last, you had to have illusions or have no illusions at all. But you had to stick to one or the other. It was the switching back and forth that endangered things.
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love-illusions
lasting-love
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Lorrie Moore |
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23998bc
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Life is sad. Here is someone.
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lovers
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Lorrie Moore |
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0538740
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Don't make your own life your project in your own life: total waste of time.
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Lorrie Moore |
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5b01075
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Pleasantness was the machismo of the Midwest. There was something athletic about it. You flexed your face into a smile and let it hover there like the dare of a cat.
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Lorrie Moore |
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38d162b
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Personally I've never put much store by honesty- I mean how can you trust a word whose first letter you don't even pronounce
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Lorrie Moore |
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a2f47ae
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I just don't want you to feel uncomfortable about this," he says. Say: "Hey. I am a very cool person. I am tough." Show him your bicep."
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Lorrie Moore |
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d6da912
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Perhaps we had at last reached that stage of intimacy that destroys intimacy.
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Lorrie Moore |
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d020a89
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I've accrued a kind of patience, I believe, loosely like change.
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Lorrie Moore |
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8ff6e88
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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.
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Lorrie Moore |
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d6069ab
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This lunge at moral fastidiousness was something she'd noticed a lot in people around here. They were not good people. They were not kind. But they recycled their newspapers!
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Lorrie Moore |
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37a2a85
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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.
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Lorrie Moore |