10 Quotes & Sayings By Rick Moody

Rick Moody is the author of twenty-four books, including ten novels, four collections of short stories, and three books of nonfiction. He has received numerous awards for his fiction, including the 1988 PEN/Malamud Award in Short Stories, the 1989 O. Henry Award, and two O. Henry Awards Read more

He has received many grants and fellowships, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship to study playwriting at Yale University in 1988. He lives in Los Angeles.

1
There should be a sex-related metric with which you could measure sex in hotels, especially the illicit variety, but of what would that metric consist? How about increments of remorse? Rick Moody
2
My idea of literature, as I have often said, is that it should save lives. My idea of literature is that it once did save lives, and was of consequence in that way. I believe it can do so again. With every book, to the best of my ability, I try to put this belief in action, even if, as in some of the recent books, the best way to save lives is to cause laughter. Bring on your problems, and I will listen, and bear witness, and when the occasion permits, I will respond, according to certain general rules, on this page, in this hope that here too words may be redemptive. Rick Moody
3
The thing you did to alleviate the loneliness was to take off your clothes and touch someone, even if you didn’t really know the person well. Rick Moody
4
What kind of woman was she? What kind of woman was it who called to me from that calamity on the Seventh Avenue line? What kind of woman do I love now, with a fealty that will not cease, not till my occluded arteries send their clots up to the spongy interiors in my skull and I go mute and slack? I love the kind of woman whose hair has gone gray in a not terribly flattering way, the kind who doesn't even notice how she has to keeps having to buy larger jeans, the kind who likes big cars because she doesn't like to be uncomfortable. I love this woman because she is gifted with astounding premonitory skills: no matter how uncertain, how despondent, how lost her mate feels, no matter how dire the circumstances, she nonetheless predicts that Everything will be roses. Rick Moody
5
The middle is the longest in any story, and therefore the time with the most desperation. Rick Moody
6
I am not that creative. And therefore you must be real. Rick Moody
7
What was boring was somehow more elegant, more perfect, for it was incontrovertible. The boring was everything that certainly was. The boring was everything that had stood the test of time. The boring was that set of truths that were so long fixed that erosion had begun to sand them down. The boring was geological; the boring was universal. The boring, therefore, was preferable. Rick Moody
8
[I]t is things that make us happy when conversation begins to reveal itself as a paltry substitute. Rick Moody
9
I suppose I should say that I treasure blasphemy, as a faith of the highest order. Rick Moody