Lorrie Moore, Anagrams

"I watched my friend Eleanor give birth," she said. "Once you've seen a child born, you realize a baby's not much more than a reconstituted ham and cheese sandwich. Just a little anagram of you and what you've been eating for nine months."

"My new apartment might be a place where there are lots of children. They might gather on my porch to play, and when I step out for groceries, they will ask me, "Hi, do you have any kids" and then, "Why not, don't you like kids"I like kids," I will explain. "I like kids very much." And when I almost run over them with my car, in my driveway, I will feel many different things."

"You have a choice," she told the class. "The whorish emptiness of lies or the straightlaced horrors of truth."

"I would never understand photography, the sneaky, murderous taxidermy of it."

"Life is sad. Here is someone."

"This is why a woman makes things up: Because when she dies, those lives she never got to are all going down with her. All those possibilities will just site there like a bunch of school kids with their hands raised and uncalled on--each knowing, really knowing, the answer."

"In the Dictionary 'lumpy jaw' comes just before 'lunacy,' but in life there are no such clues. Suddenly, for no reason, you might start to dribble from the mouth, to howl peevishly at the moon. You might start quoting your mother, out loud and with conviction. You might lose your friends to the most uninspired of deaths. You might one day wake up and find yourself teaching at a community college; there will have been nothing to warn you. You might say things to your students like, There is only one valid theme in literature: Life will disappoint you."

"They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die."