Lorrie Moore Quotes

Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues - which takes years.

I don't think much of anything I wrote before the age of 30.

My first records are integral because I made them, you know, and I'm going to learn from those mistakes.

I love all of my children equally, all of my printed books, and each one bears a special piece of me. But the one I'm most proud of is the one no one will ever see - the very first manuscript I ever wrote, back in 1990. It took me a year to do it.

I'd say that after my father passed my writing changed, it went deeper. Most would say 'matured' but I don't think I'd use that word in relation to my progress. I think 'change' is a little more accurate.

As an artist, one of the ingredients to doing good work is self-awareness, and that's something I cultivate.

I can put some chords together and maybe write a song, but I'm learning every day. And that's the fun part.

I used to write poems more when I was younger, but I haven't in a long time. I just write ideas and paragraphs and go from there.

I've done seven movies in eight years, and with each movie I feel like I'm learning a lot. I'm still young-ish, so I still feel like I'm in the zone of learning and creating. Those are the perfect places to do that. And in a weird way, you have a lot of freedom.

I think the time in between albums, as much as it was not anticipated, it was much-needed, and very helpful, very useful. I've done nothing but hone my craft, and get better, and learn, and gather information in the process. So I'm grateful for it in retrospect.

If you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago.

I'm constantly learning as a songwriter, so naturally that makes you grow as an artist. But I also think the more time I spend in music the more time I feel I understand it; or at least I understand where I stand amongst the industry and my identity within it all.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

It's been 50 years since I was on the roof of my parents' house shooting Hag in a Black Leather Jacket when I didn't even know there was such a thing as editing. I thought you just shot the film and showed it. That's exactly what I did. I'm not that different 50 years later.

I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself.

A writer in someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is.

Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.

How long does it take to write a good book? All of the years that you've lived.

You think you're developing and getting better and then you see something you did years ago. Looking at your early work.. sometimes it has a depth that surprises you.

I'm only 49 years old. I'm still in the middle of this whole thing. I don't feel like it's finished at all. I'm still planning to write better songs.

I'm glad that I didn't have the Internet when I started writing. I started writing when I was 20 and didn't show a word of it to anyone until I was 28. I had the sense to keep it to myself. Now the temptation with blogs and such, they're just getting it out there; maybe it would have been best to keep it to themselves.

Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life.

I came to fantasy fairly late. For some ten years, I had been happily writing fiction and non-fiction for adults. But I always loved fantasy, whether for adults or young people; and at that particular point in my life, I wanted to try it, to understand it, as part of the process of learning to be a writer. The results were beyond anything I could have foreseen. As I've said often and elsewhere, it was the most creative and liberating experience of my life.

We haven't been on the same page in years. It is what it is. Sometimes that match burns out. So, no, I don't feel bad about it. It's good. I'm grateful for everything we have done throughout our careers and if there's nothing else to put out, then there's nothing to put out. I'm constantly writing and working. It doesn't stop there.

Every book changes my writing because I'm always trying to do something I didn't do before. I try to do what's hard for me, what I haven't done in the past.