Lorrie Moore Quotes

The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.... Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

A witty illustration or an apt story will accomplish more than columns of argument.

It was unpredictable, good storytelling that brought you back each week.

A book can be wonderful and powerful and accessible and artful all at the same time.

I want to tell a story that makes the reader always want to see what will happen next.

Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.

I always think if it's a good story, the audience can't wait to run out of the theater and go tweet somebody with the gist of a story, in a nutshell, almost, because it was that interesting.

Anyone can write an academic piece directed at other academics. To write something that delivers an argument and a gripping storyline to someone's granny or eight-year-old takes the highest quality of your powers.

History should be written so that someone wants to read it

Audiences are always open to an interesting story.

The desire to hear a story, and a story well told, triumphs over Internet, film and television sometimes.

We're storytellers - and if the story is told well, you go with the form.

People are interested if you tell stories well and relevantly.

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

Merely stating a truth isn't enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship.

What I always try to do in all my books is to make the stories such that if you don't agree with me politically or you're not interested in the thematics, the story will still keep you turning the pages.

In a sea of stories, find the right one to tell, and the right way to tell it.

Rex Stout's narrative and dialogue could not be improved, and he passes the supreme test of being rereadable. I don't know how many times I have reread the Wolfe stories, but plenty. I know exactly what is coming and how it is all going to end, but it doesn't matter. That's writing.

If it's commercial fiction that you want to write, it's story, story, story. You've got to get a story where if you tell it to somebody in a paragraph, they'll go, "Tell me more." And then when you start to write it, they continue to want to read more. And if you don't, it won't work.

…everything has a narrative, really, and if you can’t understand a story and relate to it, figure out how you fit inside it, you’re not really alive at all.

The truth is not so good a story.

The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed

What's the use of stories that aren't even true?

The telling of a good story, especially one that is real and true, is always exciting.