Short Story Quotes - Page 13

• I do think that short story writing is often a matter of luck.

  Robert Sheckley

  Writing, Thinking, Luck

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• The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers, with hundreds of short stories every month, don't exist. Most of the doors for new people have been sealed.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Team, Doors, People

  The Book Reporter interview, www.bookreporter.com. April 21, 2000.

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• I mean, first, almost all writers these days teach because they don't make enough money publishing to live on, to support themselves - people like Tobias Wolff, Anne Beattie, Amy Hempel, Stuart Dybek; a lot of short story writers, for one thing.

  Chad Harbach

  Mean, People, Support

  "Universities Gain Power In Literary World". Interview with Audie Cornish, www.npr.org. December 12, 2010.

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• Alice Munro is a particular kind of short story writer in that she writes long, character-driven short stories.

  Nell Freudenberger

  Writing, Character, Long

  "Off the Page: Nell Freudenberger". The Washington Post Live Q&As, www.washingtonpost.com. December 12, 2007.

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• Most publishers seem very reluctant to publish short story collections at all; they bring them out in paperback, often disguised as novels.

  John Thomas Sladek

  Stories, Novel, Collections

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• A novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories.

  Walker Percy

  Fiction, Stories, Novel

  Walker Percy (2011). “Signposts in a Strange Land”, p.77, Open Road Media

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• People who rarely read long books, or even short stories, still appreciate the greatest examples of the shortest literary genres. I have long been fascinated by these short genres. They seem to lie just where my heart is, somewhere between literature and philosophy.

  Gary Saul Morson

  Philosophy, Lying, Book

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• I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.

  Tobias Wolff

  Believe, Writing, Different

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• Well, as a short-story writer, I don't think there are any weaknesses to the genre itself. I guess I would say that the difficulty of the form is that one must create an entire world in five to 30 pages, as opposed to 300. There is very little room for fat - you must be economical. And you must begin as close to the end as you possibly can.

  ZZ Packer

  Writing, Thinking, Weakness

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• I think I got spoiled and that writing a short story and getting it published, or writing a novel and getting it published, you pretty much get to do the first, second and third draft yourself without a whole lot of interference.

  John Sayles

  Writing, Thinking, Stories

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• Once in 1919, when I was traveling at night by train, I wrote a short story. In the town where the train stopped, I took the story to the publisher of the newspaper who published the story.

  Mikhail Bulgakov

  Night, Stories, Towns

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• I started writing about New York as soon as I arrived. I was 19. I used to write short stories and send them out.

  Candace Bushnell

  New York, Writing, Stories

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• A novel requires a certain kind of world-building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you have this sense that there are hinges that the reader doesn't see.

  Dan Chaon

  Stories, World, Kind

  "Staying Awake with Dan Chaon". Interview with Clare Stein, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 6, 2012.

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• I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.

  Dan Chaon

  Stories, Mystery, Built

  "Staying Awake with Dan Chaon". Interview with Clare Stein, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 6, 2012.

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• Short stories are wonderful and extremely challenging, and the joy of them, because it only takes me three or four months to write, I can take more risks with them. It's just less of your life invested.

  Anthony Doerr

  Writing, Joy, Challenges

  "Off the Page: Anthony Doerr". Live chat, www.washingtonpost.com. October 14, 2004.

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• I'm not a writer. I think I can write short stories and poetry, but film writing, brilliant film writing, is a talent - you can't just do it like that.

  Samantha Morton

  Writing, Thinking, Stories

  "Samantha Morton: 'I was abused for a long time and I retaliated'". Interview with Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. April 24, 2009.

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• When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.

  Tea Obreht

  Mother, Black And White, Eight

  "Téa Obreht" by Jennifer L. Knox, www.newyorker.com. June 14 & 21, 2010.

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• I found that I could write two kinds of short stories: I could write very absurd, kind of surrealistic, funny stories; or I could write very dark, realistic - hyper-realistic - stories. I was never happy with that, because I couldn't meld the two.

  Dennis Lehane

  Writing, Dark, Two

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com. August 1999.

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• I'm one of those writers who started off writing novels and came to writing short stories later, partly because I didn't have the right ideas, partly because I think that short stories are more difficult. I think learning to write short stories also made me attracted toward a paring down of the novel form.

  Julian Barnes

  Writing, Thinking, Ideas

  "Conversation: Julian Barnes, Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize". "Art Beat" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. November 8, 2011.

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• Songwriters are expanding time rather than compressing time. My short stories tend to be old fashioned, with a beginning, middle and end.

  Steve Earle

  Stories, Beginning Middle And End, Ends

  Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. October 8, 2007.

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• I am drawn to writing books about magic and the supernatural because those are the types of books I like to read. I've written many short stories with realistic settings, and I certainly wouldn't rule out realistic novels in the future!

  Cassandra Clare

  Book, Writing, Magic

  TheFandom.net Interview, www.thefandom.net.

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• In college I wrote for the university newspaper, and I had several short stories published in small press. I think it's just been a natural progression of where to go with the imagination and not have to grow up.

  Gabriel Campisi

  Growing Up, College, Thinking

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I don't revise a lot when writing short stories. As far as the novel, I definitely thought more about plot. Honestly, I'm still pretty confused about what "plot" means. I've been reading some of my Goodreads reviews and one reader noted that the The Last Days of California "reads like a short story stretched to the breaking point, padded and brought into novel range..." I don't know what people want, really.

  Mary J. Miller

  Confused, Reading, Mean

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I like to write short stories more because I never met a writer who wasn't lazy. And a short story is, by its very definition, short. It is something that generally you can turn out in a week to two weeks depending on how well it goes for you. But, at the same time, it gives the same satisfaction of creating a complete world.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Two, Creating

  Interview with Phil Konstantin, americanindian.net. July 1987.

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• I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

  O. Henry

  Writing, Giving, Secret

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