Lorrie Moore Quotes

After school, I'd wait for someone to pick me up and no one would, so I'd be like, 'I guess I'll walk home.' I had to be a hustler, because nobody did anything for me.

There's something quite satisfying, quite reassuring about seeing a man having to survive.

It definitely toughens you up. It makes you mature from a young age, living away from home.

Nobody's going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you're rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things befall you. Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It's up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out.

I always knew that I would have to make it on my own somehow.

Kenya, being a third world country, from a young age your eyes are open to the real world. I'd like to think growing up there taught me to stand on my own two feet, make my own decisions about what I wanted to be.

Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn't just skills like computer technology. It's the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command.

There's danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, 'My life is a little harder than it used to be.' At a certain place you've got to say to the people, 'Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope.'

I have to thank my mum for kicking me out at 16 and making me stand on my own two feet - that's how I got here.

As far as I was concerned, the Depression was an ill wind that blew some good. If it hadn't occurred, my parents would have given me my college education. As it was, I had to scrabble for it.

In my life I had no other choice than to become a strong person.

I basically raised myself.

No cracked earth, no blistering sun, no burning wind, no grasshoppers, are a permanent match for the indomitable American farmers and stockmen and their wives and children who have carried on through desperate days, and inspire us with their self-reliance, their tenacity and their courage. It was their fathers' task to make homes; it is their task to keep those homes; it is our task to help them with their fight.

We can and we will solve our problems for ourselves. We know how. We can, and we will.

If you help a chicken out of an egg, most of the time that bird will die. If you help a moth out of a cocoon, it'll die because they don't go through that struggle and maturation. I can give you a fish for the day and you'll eat a day, but if I teach you to fish, you'll eat for a lifetime. Maybe even start a business.

I don't feel disabled, and I think everybody makes their own way in life.

My mom had not worked a day in her life, and then she woke up when I was 15 and found herself with four children, no job, no money. But she set out and made it all OK for us, and from that, I saw that there's no problem that can't be solved.

Some experiences can give you a chip on your shoulder, but they also teach you the value of independence and looking out for yourself.

When I was four, my mother insisted I get out of the car and find my own way home. Although I got lost, I did find my way home. It taught me the value of independence at an early age.

When you give kids the tools necessary to change their destiny, it's really empowering.

I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it!

I was out of the house at 16 by my own doing. It forced me to really grow up and take care of myself, and I learned a lot of things that your parents usually teach you, on my own.

Do I have the mental strength? I left home when I was 13 years old.

I definitely had to pave my own path, which wasn't always the easiest thing to do.

I make my own opportunities no matter what.