Lorrie Moore Quotes

It is as true for the writer as for the reader that any novel worth its ink should be an experience first and foremost - not an essay, not a statement, not an orderly rollout of themes and propositions.

You put books out into the world, and people form their own visuals and images and attachments to characters; those characters become part of them, and they have their feelings about them.

I like looking at a book and asking myself, 'How do I replicate that experience I just had as a reader?'

I would like my novels to be read the way I read the novels I love.

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer.

As I read, I start to form clear ideas of the characters and allow myself to be a proper conduit for this author's voice so that you will feel you have been on a seductive audio journey.

Writing a book for me, I expect, is very similar to the experience of reading the book for my readers.

When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'

Whatever the readers feel when they're reading my books, I feel it tenfold when I'm writing it.

I just write the sort of book that I would enjoy reading myself, a book that is both scholarly and recreates the experience of people at that time.

A reader should encounter themselves in a novel, I think.

I wanted to show those characters discovering it is possible to find common ground, as they make their way through a plotline that I hope is engrossing enough to keep the reader a willing participant.

It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.

In writing literary fiction, you are trying to help yourself. And readers are going to literary fiction not just to be entertained, but because they feel something else will happen; that the experience will take them beyond themselves and show them something they haven't seen before.

When people read a novel 600 pages long, six months pass, and all they will remember are five pages. They don't remember the text - instead, they remember the sensations the text gives them.

I'm always sorry to finish a book, to let go of characters I love, people I've struggled to understand for years, people who evolve before me.

But because we've all been readers, we know what the experience is like, and we hope that what certain writers have given to us, we will give to someone.

When we read a book, we have a blurry image that's kind of physical but blurry. But we have an emotional image also. We have an emotional connection to the character.

I go to great lengths to make certain situations feel right to the reader.

People used to expect literary novels to deepen the experience of living; now they are happy with any sustained display of writerly cleverness.

In the end, my reasons for moving down the timeline and introducing a new cast have more to do with keeping myself entertained, on the assumption that if I get bored, my readers are going to be even more bored.

It's like fiction - the fact that somebody's telling you a story about people who didn't exist doesn't make the experience of the story any less real in your heart and mind. You go through heavy emotional responses to these stories, and wrestling is a similar thing - but it's happening in real space.

In fiction, the reader will make jumps with you. If you can make the reader make that leap with you, it's a thrilling moment for everyone.

The portal structure is simply a technique: it is neither necessary nor unnecessary, except as the writer and the story make it so. In the case of 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant,' it was absolutely necessary to my intentions.

It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow.