Dinty W. Moore Quotes

#1. The difference between a story and an essay is that the storyteller just wants to entertain the reader, while the essayist has been to graduate school.

Dinty W. Moore

#2. Memory is like a rope, knotted every three or four feet, and hanging down a deep well. When you pull it up, just about anything might be attached to those knots. But you'll never know what's there if you don't pull. And the more you pull at that rope, the more you find.

Dinty W. Moore

#3. What are minnows but brief flashes? And what are thoughts? And how do you capture a brief flash, even for a second?

Dinty W. Moore

#4. Those are serious questions. Let me avoid them as best I can.

Dinty W. Moore

#5. Not all writing is political or revolutionary, but the very act of giving yourself permission to write, to speak, to share the truth no matter whether the truth you understand is the truth others want to acknowledge, is brave, powerful, and important.

Dinty W. Moore

#6. Kaethe Schwehn's poignant memoir explores longing, both spiritual and physical, community and faith, in prose that is calm, lovely, and filled with clear-eyed honesty and grace. Tailings is simply an exquisite book.

Dinty W. Moore

#7. Exercise the muscles that compassionately open the heart.
In your writing and your life.

Dinty W. Moore

#8. Words will never fully capture what is alive in our hearts.
It would be a shame, though, if we denied our bears their dancing.

Dinty W. Moore

#9. We are rushing, always thinking of the future, of our destination, focusing on what is four hours, or four hundred miles, or four years ahead, and constantly missing what is right there, just then, at the moment.

Dinty W. Moore

#10. But if we don't prefer things, then we increase our chances to be content.

Dinty W. Moore

#11. The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. - THOMAS PAINE

Dinty W. Moore

#12. Cars, with their air conditioning, windows, sound systems, and great speed, keep us isolated from our environment ...
"Self-propulsion," such as biking, walking, canoeing, puts us in touch with the land below and the world around us.

Dinty W. Moore