Lane Moore > Quotes

“When you have a lot of shine to you, as so many bighearted people often do, you can attract a lot of people easily, because people are drawn to it, that kind of light. It can be so easy to forget that not everyone deserves your shine. But when you spend so much of your earliest years being told you have no shine at all, even though you're pretty sure maybe you do, and someone finally tells you they see it too, you do, you have it, you want to give them everything. Because of this, more often than not, you're not falling in love with them, you're using them as a way to fall in love with yourself.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“At times I've struggled to feel seen, to have my history feel seen, to have where I come from feel seen because I 'turned out great.' But that doesn't meant that I Am Fine. I am working every day, tirelessly, like you wouldn't believe, on being fine, f**king finally, can we get this over with, I'm so tired and I just want to travel and eat and smile and move through the world with a semblance of peace.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“The Friend Zone, while not always ideal, is still a goddamn gift, and really, the definition of true love. If you love someone, or even just care about them, as you claim to, you don’t mind the Friend Zone at all, because sure, fine, you don’t get to French them and stuff, but you get to know them and be close to them and hear all the dumb things that run through their minds and all the brilliant things that they don’t even know are brilliant. You get to know them and share the same air, and you’re alive at the same time, which is a gift in and of itself. If you don’t want the Friend Zone, you don’t want the girl. Simple as that.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“When I’m with friends now, as an adult, I don’t want to have polite adult tea and talk about our jobs. I don’t want to sit in dress pants while we talk about a New Yorker article. Not really. I want to lie on the couch, cozy in blankets, watching movies, feeling safe enough to pass out and stay the night if we want to. I want to turn English muffins into foundations for pizza bagels at ten p.m., even though they’re not as good as bagels and we know it. I want to tell each other things we can’t talk about online, or we can’t tell our coworkers, and to cry and still be lovable, even if we’re in pain sometimes. To break in front of each other, and pick up the pieces together, before making some dumb joke and telling each other we love each other and knowing we’re safe to be all of it.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“I really just want someone to come over and brush my hair or let me cry in their lap while they pet my head and tell me I'll be okay." And I cried harder because I felt so ashamed to want that from a friend—from someone who was not a romantic partner or a parent⁠—because I didn't have either right now but I still wanted it. We section off physical comfort and intimacy so heavily. We reserve it for partners only, and platonic friends can only chit-chat and that's it. How can you tell people to be okay with being single while also telling them they can only get the basic human needs of physical touch from not being single?”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“People who reject you for being broken after they're the ones who broke you, or who act like they're not the problem and the problem is the issues you had before them, are evil. They just are.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“Because sometimes people come into our lives just to show us what we don’t want, and those people have given us the gift of being a mirror. And that mirror shows us who we really are and all that we’ve buried, all the needs we’ve pushed underground because they seemed unsightly. And if we’re lucky, another friend comes into the picture soon after, to confirm that the needs we’ve buried can be met, can rise from the earth like buds, to be watered, and nurtured by the people around us, until we see that our needs were not burdens, not unsightly flaws to be worked on, but instead, vital parts of us that deserve to bloom.”
― Lane Moore, You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult

“So if you raised yourself and you’re listening to this, I am so proud of you. You raised a hell of a kid and it wasn’t easy! I can’t even imagine — no one can! Okay, I kind of can, but still. But you’re here and you could have easily backslid into pain and nothingness and worthlessness and hopelessness. And maybe you did backslide, time and again. But every time, you climbed back up and tried to be kinder and softer and find more room in your heart for compassion instead of hatred; hope instead of defeat. And let me tell you, someone (YOU) raised you right.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“I can’t describe to you how it feels to go from thinking you have a true partner, true best friend, and true soul mate to seeing that person become your abuser—and then seeing them cheat on you and see that maybe you were a mark all along, a pawn in a game you didn’t see coming that played out exactly the way they intended.

I’ve experienced so many shades of this before, and all I can say is this: If you see a woman who is working super hard to become who she’s meant to be and to achieve the things she wants to achieve, and you have nothing to add to her life or to give back to her in any way, please just leave her the fuck alone.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“I've realized that sometimes being alone truly is better than being around people, especially if they're the wrong people. Sometimes you just need time to yourself and it doesn't make you weird or wrong. It's a sign you really like spending time with you, which is health as shit, so good job.”
― Lane Moore

“I wish I could give you a clean and simple business card explaining what happened so I could be the kind of orphan who would immediately make sense to everyone. Like if my parents had a socially recognizable problem that immediately explained their inability to take care of me and my sister. Something I could put on paper and hand to people as proof. “Here. This is why.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“So you take physical affection when you can get it, almost feeling guilty when you do. You might sleep with someone just to get to the cuddling part, knowing full well that if cuddling had been on the table, you might not have even slept with them to begin with. You might get super happy when your yoga teachers do adjustments because having someone touch you in a safe, gentle way⁠—even for two seconds⁠—feels like it changes your whole world. I know I do. Partly because human beings are designed to be physically comforted by one another.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“There’s a very particular no-mans-land that comes with having alive parents who are technically there, could technically take you in if you really needed somewhere to go, but if you went there you wouldn’t be any safer than anywhere else.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“And more than anything, feel proud of yourself, because you didn’t let being other kill you. You’re still here, and one day maybe you’ll have a family of your own and you’ll love the holidays. Or maybe you’ll never like this time of year. Either way, you’ll still be here, living. Sometimes that’s the bravest thing of all. And if you don’t believe me, it’s a line in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and as I and I both know, that show is everything.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“It’s absolutely better to be by yourself than with someone you don’t even like. Or whom you do like but they don’t make you feel super great.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“I’m open to being attracted to any gender and rarely attracted to any, so miss me with this stupid idea that in any room everyone is appealing to me because they’re technically a gender I have dated.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“Let me briefly affirm that you choose your labels. You choose those you show them to. You choose when the labels change, if they change. None of us is just one of anything.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“You don’t want too many things. You want what you damn well want, which everyone is allowed. There is so much rhetoric I see, saying that you shouldn’t “expect you from other people.” That people are limited, and they can’t be expected to give you as much as you give them. But it is so important to remember that you are very much allowed to require you from other people if that’s what you need. If you give a lot emotionally, you are absolutely allowed to hold out for someone who can give the same amount of emotional resonance, the same amount of compassion, when they are able. And if someone sees those needs and knows they can’t provide them, that’s OK, too, but you’re allowed to have them just the same.”
― Lane Moore, You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult

“you’re allowed to want a friendship to be able to give you everything you need, even if they don’t understand those needs because their needs are different. You’re allowed to hold out for someone who can meet you where you’re at.”
― Lane Moore, You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult

“When you don’t have the affection and or attachment you should have at home, it’s totally natural that you’d quickly become someone who is OBSESSED with friendships.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“That time in my life was so full of horrible people and just the worst luck, it was nearly impossible for me to trust anyone. I kept worrying, What if I’m making the wrong decisions again? But sometimes life allows you to form”
― Lane Moore, You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult

“And not because surviving trauma makes you better or worse, but because trauma can make you feel like you’re weird, unlike anyone else, and no one could possibly relate to you or see you and give you what you need.”
― Lane Moore, You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult

“the kinds of connections that are just close enough to what you want, while also being exactly what you currently need.”
― Lane Moore, You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult

“I’ve never had that thing of like “Leave stuff at your parents’ house.” Because the second I left home, I gave away or threw away everything and I regret it all the time but I know why I did it. I didn’t know if I was ever coming back or could come back and I didn’t want to leave something and then later need it and have no way to get it back.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“nothing ruins Halloween faster than a male Wiccan’s penis.)”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“If I have ever loved someone on any level, in a way, I always will. And I expect, perhaps naïvely, that those people will always care about me.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“We spend so much time in our childhoods learning about practicing fairness, but the world itself is not fair, as much as we’d like it to be. We’re not all walking the same path, with the same resources and the exact same timing. Ideally, we’d all get the support systems we were promised, but then some of us don’t, and no one taught us how to fill in those cracks. No one teaches us how to find power in vulnerability, how to build intimacy, how to grow as a person, or how to grieve when you’ve outgrown the people you once loved. Or when they outgrow you.”
― Lane Moore, You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult

“What if you fall outside all the boxes? What are you supposed to do then, other than wrestle with the feelings of otherness, the "oh shit, my sexual-identity deadline is here and I don't have all my paperwork filled out yet"? There really is something about being able to put yourself into one concise, well-marked, tidy section of society, dusting your hands off on your pants. "That's that. Now I can move on with my day." But it's not that simple.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“How many times I've sat with people, even as an adult, wishing I could hold their hand, or lie in their lap, or cry in front of them, or tell them how I really felt about them, or ask them how they really felt about me, and how many hours I wasted thinking of how I would do it, when I should do it, begging myself to "just do it now! Who cares!" Then once I did it, I'd wish I'd done it much sooner because it's was fine, it was safe, I was safe.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“One flaw in my make up, perhaps (though I don’t really see it as one), is that once you’ve meant something to me you’re in my heart forever.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't