Lorrie Moore Quotes

My heart is too thoroughly dried to be broken in a hurry, and I mean to live as long as I can.

I don't want to be thought of as a survivor because you have to continue getting involved in difficult situations to show off that particular gift, and I'm not interested in doing that anymore.

In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws.

The concept of emotional or spiritual survival has an honorable history, but it does invite self-indulgence. In my own case, the worst I ever survived was severe personal and political confusion, the temptation to various sorts of craziness and a couple of bad acid trips. It felt pretty horrendous at the time, and some of it was even dangerous, but Auschwitz it wasn't.

When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania,--when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that, on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank,--oh, then diet yourself well on biography,--the biography of good and great men. See how little a space one sorrow really makes in life. See scarce a page, perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own, and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it.

It's okay not to be okay... Sometimes it's hard, to follow your heart but tears don't mean you're losing, everybody's bruising, there's nothing wrong with who you are.

I'm not a victim. And the people who are victims of something, my heart is completely with them. But I'm not. I know I've been treated like a woman in this business [acting]. I mean I've got lots of stories, but they don't have any control over me.

There’s always going to be ups and downs in life and it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel the pain. Pain is good. It makes you stronger in time. You will realize how great the ‘great’ really is. Life is about ups and downs. You just have to be able to ride the waves.

I have wondered why is it that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death that others.

We all have moments of weakness. It’s how we recover from them that really counts.

Dark clouds may hang on me sometimes, but I'll work it out.

My spirits rose as I went deeper; into the forest; but I could not regain my former elasticity of mind. I found cheerfulness to be like life itself - not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of pain fill thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill. So, better and worse, I went on, till I came to a little clearing in the forest.

I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or fears?

One can bear anything. The pain we cannot bear will kill us outright.

We can only feel sorry for ourselves when our misfortunes are still supportable. Once this limit is crossed, the only way to bear the unbearable is to laugh at it.

Man must be able to recover, to win out, triumph over adversity. And I don't mean just the little adversity like paying his room rent or something. But those deep, deep human adversities because something he has faith in has turned to ashes. Where someone he loves turns out to be just another joke. You get to the point of suicide. But you can bounce back - they can't completely destroy you.

I think even if you haven't been divorced, you can hopefully relate to having to navigate through a really difficult time and see how you can get through to the other side and how you can stay positive, even if there's some really bad stuff happening.

When you're threatened, or something hard hits you, acknowledge it, embrace it. Don't pretend that you didn't get hurt - hurt, cry, think about it. And then you let it go and try something else.

Life's fairly excruciating. Painful things happen. Every now and then, you drag yourself out of the stream and stand on the bank gasping for air. I think that's how I work.

When things have gone really wrong in my life, I've cried like a child. I have really, really cried. I cry it out. Two-three days I cry, and then I'm like, enough, time to deal with reality and figure a way out. This is the way I have dealt with everything.

Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?

I exist in a world that's pretty gruesome. All I can tell you is this: I'm trying to keep my balance.

How you recover from what life's throwing at you is what matters.

Human beings have enormous resilience.

I'm surprised that I've survived my own dysfunction, really.