Short Story Quotes - Page 16

• Crude at first [the short story] received a literary polish in the press, but its dominant quality remained. It was concise and condense, yet suggestive. It was delightfully extravagant - or a miracle of understatement

  Bret Harte

  Miracle, Quality, Stories

  Bret Harte (2001). “The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings”, p.218, Penguin

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• It would seem evident, therefore, that the secret of the American short story was the treatment of characteristic American life, with absolute knowledge of its peculiarities and sympathy with its method.

  Bret Harte

  Secret, Stories, Characteristics

  Bret Harte (2001). “The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings”, p.222, Penguin

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• The London 'Academy' has seen fit recently to scoff at the critics who have been exercising themselves ove rthe so-called art of the Short Story... But the new Short Story has gained more individuality. It supports the magazines and has invaded the newspapers

  Henry Seidel Canby

  Art, Exercise, Support

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• While the novel-writer aims at an eminently natural method of transcription, the author of the short story adopts a very artificial one

  Henry Seidel Canby

  Stories, Natural, Method

  Henry Seidel Canby (1902). “The Short Story”

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• A short story is simplification to the highest degree

  Henry Seidel Canby

  Degrees, Stories, Highest

  Henry Seidel Canby (1902). “Yale Studies in English”

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• The function of the Short Story is to be interesting, to convey vivid impressions, an therefore it must, to a degree, work with the evident and superficial thing

  Henry Seidel Canby

  Superficial Things, Interesting, Degrees

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• The short story, its course plotted and its form proscribed, has become too efficient... but efficiency is not the most, it is perhaps the least, important among the undoubted elements of good literature

  Henry Seidel Canby

  Important, Stories, Elements

  Henry Seidel Canby (1922). “Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism”

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• Readers tend to devour short stories on a newssheet, but would be disinclined to read them in collections

  L.P. Hartley

  Would Be, Stories, Reader

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• The first thing we see about a short story is its mystery. And in the best short stories, we return at the last to see mystery again

  Eudora Welty

  Best Short, Stories, Lasts

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• You could omit anything if you knew that the omitted part would strengthen the short story and make people feel something more than they understood

  Ernest Hemingway

  People, Stories, Feels

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• The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime

  Bernard Malamud

  Self, Stories, Pages

  Bernard Malamud (1984). “The Stories of Bernard Malamud”

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• I was trying to write a song based on a story in a random book of Puerto Rican short stories that I found in a thrift store. I thought it was really dark, and so I tried to interpret it. I've always been interested in writing from other people's perspectives and other gender perspectives.

  Bradford Cox

  Song, Book, Writing

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• I was a lot dumber when I was writing the novel. I felt like worse of a writer because I wrote many of the short stories in one sitting or over maybe three days, and they didn't change that much. There weren't many, many drafts. That made me feel semi-brilliant and part of a magical process. Writing the novel wasn't like that. I would come home every day from my office and say, "Well, I still really like the story, I just wish it was better written." At that point, I didn't realize I was writing a first draft. And the first draft was the hardest part.

  Miranda July

  Home, Writing, Office

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I used to take my short stories to girls' homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

  Ray Bradbury

  Girl, Reading, Home

  "From the archive: Ray Bradbury on life, love and Buck Rogers". Interview with John Ezard, www.theguardian.com. June 7, 2012.

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• I couldn't sit down and write a novel or a short story - even now - because of my dyslexia. But I learned narration through movies.

  Robert Benton

  Writing, Down And, Stories

  Source: classic.esquire.com

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• I've been doing morning pages: the first thing I do when I wake up is sit down and write three pages of whatever comes into my head. The more I do them, the more creative I get and the smaller my problems seem. I can turn something that I hated a few days ago into a short story or a song.

  T. Mills

  Song, Morning, Writing

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• I was also a good writer, by the way. My, you know, my English teacher and writing teacher loved my writing. You know, I wrote short stories and things like that. And they liked them very much.

  Robert Barry

  Teacher, Writing, Stories

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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• If you read my short stories, there's a lot of sex in those in all different ways. To me, it's a really good, useful thing to get to have in a story. And in a movie, it's amazing, because you actually get to show things.

  Miranda July

  Sex, Different, Stories

  Interview with Noel Murray, film.avclub.com. July 7, 2008.

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• [Jorge Luis Borges] had short stories, and I was trying to learn how to write short stories, and then he had these things in the middle that were like fables, and I loved hearing fables.

  Sandra Cisneros

  Writing, Trying, Stories

  Source: quod.lib.umich.edu

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• I like to envision the creation of a short story collection as being like putting together a jazz album. Yes, there's logic and literary structures imposed by me, but at the same time, all the tracks are shaped and ordered in a much more improvisational manner. The guiding principle for me is whether or not a story adds a layer or texture to the overall collection.

  Daniel Olivas

  Track, Together, Logic

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• I had a short story collection come out in 2006, and then I couldn't work on large projects for a long time because I was finishing my doctoral degree.

  Theodora Goss

  Long, Finishing, Degrees

  Source: www.sfsignal.com

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• I have had, like most women, a lifelong preoccupation with my weight. My first published short story was a love story between an elderly man and a very young morbidity obese woman.

  Lori Lansens

  Men, Elderly, Firsts

  Source: www.elle.com

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• We were friends with Jonathan Demme. We were all down on the West Side of New York, and I think I met Kurt Vonnegut through Edith Demme. And then I was lucky to do Who Am I This Time? 1982, which was an adaptation of his short story that Jonathan Demme directed with Chris Walken and I, and that really cemented the friendship.

  Susan Sarandon

  New York, Thinking, Lucky

  Interview with George Saunders, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 27, 2016.

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• I think because I write so many short stories, it's not that hard to come up with characters that are not me.

  Miranda July

  Writing, Character, Thinking

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. July 28, 2011.

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• I had a story-telling mother; she's written novels and short stories. So I feel like maybe I'm staying alive by telling tales.

  Ayshay

  Mother, Stories, Alive

  Source: pitchfork.com

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