[Quit classes. Quit jobs. Cash in old savings bonds. Now you have time like warts on your hands. Slowly copy all your friends’ addresses into a new address book.
Vacuum. Chew cough drops. Keep a folder full of fragments.
An eyelid darkening sideways.
World as consipiracy.
Possible plot? A woman gets on a bus.
Suppose you threw a love affair and nobody came.
At home drink a lot of coffee. At Howard Johnson’s order the cole slaw. Consider how it looks like the soggy confetti of a map: where you’ve been, where you’re going—“You Are Here,” says the red star on the back of the menu.
Occasionally a date with a face blank as a sheet of paper asks you whether writers often become discouraged. Say that sometimes they do and sometimes they do. Say it’s a lot like having polio. “Interesting,” smiles your date, and he looks down at his arm hairs and stars to smooth them, all, always, in the same direction.]
-Lorrie Moore.