15339f7
|
Observing others go through them, he used to admire midlife crises, the courage and shamelessness and existential daring of them, but after he'd watched his own wife, a respectable nursery school teacher, produce and star in a full-blown one of her own, he found the sufferers of such crises not only self-indulgent but greedy and demented, and he wished them all weird unnatural deaths with various contraptions easily found in garages.
|
|
midlife-crises
|
Lorrie Moore |
4ec3f7e
|
I loved to say quasi. I was saying it now a lot, instead of sort of, or kind of, and it had become a tic. "I am quasi ready to go," I would announce. Or, "I'm feeling a bit quasi today." Murph called me Quasimodo. Or Kami-quasi. Or wild and quasi girl."
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
485ce39
|
Biri sizden ayrildiginda tum cekiciliginizi kaybedersiniz ve karsi tarafin yeni bir baslangic yaparken size dair besledigi tum kuskular boylece kanitlanmis olur.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
d160b72
|
They looked like frogs who'd been kissed and kissed roughly, yet stayed frogs.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
934203a
|
I can't believe I just asked you to hold my hand,' said Ira, but Mike had already taken it.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
522acb3
|
One of the problems with people in Chicago, she remembered, was that they were never lonely at the same time. Their sadness occurred in isolation, lurched and spazzed, sent them spinning fizzly back into empty, padded corners, disconnected and alone.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
eea2c5b
|
Her body was a mix of thin and plump, her skin lined and unlined, in that rounding-the-corner-to-fifty way. , he chanted silently, .
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
bba5d0a
|
The thought balloon of my own breath said, How have I found myself here?
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
f9df6c0
|
I'm going to marry you till you puke.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
fc5c3f4
|
Perhaps everyone had their own way of preparing to die. Life got you ready.
|
|
life
|
Lorrie Moore |
bc8f5c0
|
This is why a woman makes things up: Because when she dies, those lives she never got to are all going down with her. All those possibilities will just site there like a bunch of school kids with their hands raised and uncalled on--each knowing, really knowing, the answer.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
6a1961e
|
For driving, a January thaw was always preferable to actual ice, but when it was over things froze more treacherously than before. And in its melting and condensing the roadside snow turned to clumps reminiscent of black-spotted cauliflower. Better never to have thawed.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
38a5e58
|
She hated money! though she knew it was like blood and you needed it. Still, it was also like blood in that she often couldn't stand the sight of it.
|
|
money
|
Lorrie Moore |
3c55d4a
|
When misfortune accumulated, I could feel now, it strafed you to the thinness of a nightgown, sheared you to the sheerness of a slip.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
e09eacd
|
Oh, the beautiful smiles of the insane. Soon, he was sure, there would be a study that showed that the mentally ill were actually more attractive than other people. Dating proved it!
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
4478aed
|
His eyes were caught in the headlights of something - foreign policy?
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
7699f29
|
If dolphins tasted good," he said, "we wouldn't even know about their language."
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
93bfd02
|
In general, people were not road maps. People were not hieroglyphs or books. They were not stories. A person was a collection of accidents. A person was an infinite pile of rocks with things growing underneath.
|
|
people
|
Lorrie Moore |
6e1698a
|
That was also back in the days when I thought the ice-cream man lived in his truck
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
b064646
|
These were the sorts of notions that had been raised in all my classes, and we had chased them round and round like dogs maddened by their tails.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
d91dd3f
|
I once murdered someone and American Express covered everything.
|
|
neoliberalism
|
Lorrie Moore |
7186753
|
No, we're not getting married," I told my mother on the phone when she asked. "He's going to California and I'm staying here." Usually she doesn't phone. Usually she just does things like send me notes with histrionic scrawlings that read, "Well, you know, I can't use these," and along with the notes she encloses coupons for Kotex or Midol."
|
|
menopause
|
Lorrie Moore |
68014d7
|
She came to this California university for one reason, she reminds herself: the paycheck. Although every time the paycheck arrives the amount taken out in taxes for a single woman with no dependents is so huge it stuns her. The money starts to feel like an insult: For this, she thinks, I've uprooted my life? Whatever money she might save, moreover, she usually spends trying to console herself. And it is hard to make any job financially wort..
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
b128fb5
|
What I really felt was this: chopped down like a tree, a new feeling, and I was realizing that all new feelings from here on in would probably be bad ones. Surprises would no longer be good. And feelings might take on actual physical form, like those sad fish lips, a mouth speared into a gasping silence, or worse.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
f87166a
|
A veteran of the gender wars.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
52067b7
|
Her parents had gone from a couple who would be different, who would be better than anyone, who were determined to be better than most, to a couple who would be different because they were worse.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
1d19d7d
|
That's not the one you were thinking of?" "No." There was accusation in her voice. "Mine was different," --
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
b7ef961
|
A smile, a weird one, nestled in his mouth like an egg.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
6f41d69
|
Also, he had the kind of mustache a college roommate of hers used to say looked like it had crawled up to find a warm spot to die.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
4636d52
|
When they slept together, she almost cried. He was a kisser, and he kissed and kissed. It seemed the kindest thing that had ever happened to her. He kissed and whispered and brought her a large glass of water when she asked for one.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
08cb618
|
He began to prefer talking on the phone to actually getting together with someone, preferred the bodilessness of it, and started to turn down social engagements. He didn't want to actually sit across from someone in a restaurant, look at their face, and eat food. He wanted to turn away, not deal with the face, have the waitress bring them two tin cans and some string so they could just converse, in a faceless dialogue.
|
|
conversations
dialogue
introvert
like-life
lorrie-moore
restaurant
tin-can
waitress
|
Lorrie Moore |
2d1ed3d
|
Tell me something wonderful," he said to Dane. "Tell me that we are going to die dreamfully and loved in our sleep." "You're always writing one of your plays on the phone," said Dane. "I said, something wonderful. Say something about springtime." "It is sloppy and wet. It is a beast from the sea." "Ah," said Harry."
|
|
dreams
like-life
lorrie-moore
love
loved
plays
reality
sloppy
springtime
wet
writing
|
Lorrie Moore |
4debef6
|
And all love that had overtaken her would have to be a memory, a truck on the interstate roaring up from the left, a thing she must let pass.
|
|
memories
|
Lorrie Moore |
c00f055
|
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 boom sound.
|
|
boys
disappointment
guns
hunting
like-life
lorrie-moore
orgasm
|
Lorrie Moore |
a746587
|
Jane gave Heffie an anxious look. It said "Please forgive me." It also said "What is your problem?" and "Have a nice day" 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"
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
15ceb7a
|
The piece was like an elegant interrogation made of tangled yarn, a query from a well-dressed man in a casket, not yet dead. It proceeded slowly, like a careful equation, and then not: if x = y, if major = minor, if death equals part of life and life part of death, then what is the sum of the infinite notes of this one phrase? It asked, answered, reasked, its moody asking a refinement of reluctance or dislike.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
c948888
|
Things, I know, stiffen and shift in memory, become what they never were before. As when an army takes over a country. Or a summer yard goes scarlet with fall and its venous leaves. One summons the years of the past largely by witchcraft-a whore's arts, collage and brew, eye of newt, heart of horse. Still, the house of my childhood is etched in my memory like the shape of the mind itself: a house-shaped mind-why not? It was this particular ..
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
ea07e09
|
All of life seems to me a strange dream about losing things you never had to begin with. About trying to find your glasses when you can't see because you don't have your glasses on.
|
|
life
|
Lorrie Moore |
290eb15
|
Living did not mean one joy piled upon another. It was merely the hope for less pain, hope played like a playing card upon another hope, a wish for kindness and mercies to emerge like kings and queens in an unexpected change of the game. One could hold the cards oneself or not: they would land the same regardless.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
6fe0516
|
She recognized the panic at even a moment's boredom that all these piles contained, as well as the unreasonable hopefulness regarding time.
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |
ce20308
|
I'll go see her tonight,' I said. I felt I was a person of my word, and by saying something I could make it so. It was less like integrity perhaps and more like magic.
|
|
integrity
lorrie-moore
|
Lorrie Moore |
da673fc
|
Kucuk bir sinek vizlayip kulagimin yanindan gecti, sonra kayboldu. Daha once hic Noel'de sinek gormemistim; Sanat 102 dersinde hissetmemiz ogretildigi gibi, iki tanidik seyin beklenmedik sekilde yan yana gelmesinin gercekustulugunu hissederek ona vurdum. Gelecek bu olacakti.
|
|
iklim
olağan
sanat
|
Lorrie Moore |
9dfdc46
|
Pek cok eski Fransiz tuccari dogayla, ozellikle de suyla oyle dusmanca iliskiler icindeymis ki isim verdikleri her sey kasvetlerini tasiyordu: butun hos tatil yerlerinin adlari Fransizcadan Olumun Kapisi, Dalgalarin Mezari ya da Seytanin Golu olarak cevrilmisti.
|
|
fransızlar
su
yer-isimleri
|
Lorrie Moore |
65d621f
|
This lunge at moral fastidiousness was something she'd noticed a lot in the people around here. They were not good people. They were not kind. They played around and lied to their spouses. But they recycled their newspapers!
|
|
|
Lorrie Moore |