Short Story Quotes - Page 18

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• If you want to be a fiction writer, you need to start reading like a fiction writer. To do so, you need to learn about craft so that the next time you pick up a contemporary short story, you're reading it not as an abstraction floating in formaldehyde, existing simply for the theorist's dull scalpel to saw on, but as a concrete thing constructed out of words and shaped by syntax, brought to life by a writer who made several thousand choices, some large, some small, before letting that imperfect beauty, the story, walk on its own two feet.

  John McNally

  Reading, Writing, Two

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• Although I'm very lazy when it comes to writing, I'm not that lazy when it comes to thinking. I like to develop the plan of a short story, then cut it as short as possible, try to evolve all the necessary details. I know far more about the characters than what actually comes out of the writing.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Writing, Character, Cutting

  Source: www.bu.edu

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• As to my writing short pieces, there are two reasons I can give you. The first is my invincible laziness. The second is that I've always been fond of short stories, and it always took me some trouble to get through a novel.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Writing, Two, Giving

  Source: www.bu.edu

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• I can't be reading novels when I'm writing a novel, because somebody's voice creeps in. The hardest thing to do is keep the tone and your attitude over the course of a year or however long it takes.But when I'm writing short stories, which I will be doing shortly, I can read anything I like.

  T.C. Boyle

  Attitude, Reading, Writing

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I don't know what the definition of a short story is, and I don't even care to answer that question. That's something somebody in academia would think about. I just want to tell a story, and if people listen, and if it stays with you, it's a story.

  Sandra Cisneros

  Thinking, People, Want

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• The literature now is so opaque to the average person that you couldn't take a science-fiction short story that's published now and turn it into a movie. There'd be way too much ground work you'd have to lay. It's OK to have detail and density, but if you rely on being a lifelong science-fiction fan to understand what the story is about, then it's not going to translate to a broader audience.

  James Cameron

  Average, Fans, Details

  "James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora". Interview with Patrick Kevin Day, herocomplex.latimes.com. April 20, 2010.

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• I remember selling my first short story and thinking, Oh my god, I sold something for fifty dollars! That gives me the authority to say I'm a writer and to actually write more things! It legitimized the activity.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Writing, Thinking, Giving

  "Chuck Palahniuk in conversation with Tom Spanbauer". Interview with Kathryn Borel, www.believermag.com. May 2014.

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• I worked on 'Blue Peter' and 'Tonight' and lots of TV plays, filmed people like Rudolf Nureyev and Ted Heath, and ended up a senior cameraman with my own crew. I'd had my first short story published in 1947, and when my writing really started to take off I decided to go freelance, and eventually left the BBC in 1965.

  Michael Bond

  Senior, Writing, Blue

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• I first read Wendell Berry's short-story collections, "Fidelity" and then "Watch with Me." They just knocked my socks off. The characters and the fellowship of the small town reminded me of my own small town in Illinois.Then I discovered that, much like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, that all of Berry's fiction was centered in this same town.

  Nick Offerman

  Character, Illinois, Watches

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• As a child of the 1970s, I couldn't hold a narrative in my head; I was lucky if I could hold a joke in my head, because every time you turn on television or radio, it wipes the slate clean - at least in my case. After I gave up television, I found I could carry longer and longer stories or ideas in my head and put them together until I was carrying an entire short story. That's pretty much when I started writing.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Children, Writing, Ideas

  Source: www.writersdigest.com

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• The short stories tend to be a journalistic gathering of anecdotes that are put together to make something larger.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Together, Stories, Gathering

  Source: www.nightmare-magazine.com

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• I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live.

  Andre Dubus

  Short Love, Believe, Stories

  Andre Dubus (2010). “Broken Vessels: Essays”, p.81, Open Road Media

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• Ever since I can remember, I've always wanted to tell stories, but I never had the patience to sit down at a typewriter and write short stories or anything like that. I started writing songs as a way of communicating ideas the best way I could.

  Rob Thomas

  Patience, Song, Writing

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• You can't learn to write that way - by writing directly for the screen. Wait until you're 30. But in the meantime write 200 short stories. You've got to learn how to write!

  Ray Bradbury

  Writing, Waiting, Stories

  Source: www.jasonmarchi.com

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• You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into a novel - that's happened through my whole career.

  Hilary Mantel

  Writing, Thinking, Historical Novels

  "Hilary Mantel, In Brief". Interview with Seymour Glass, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 30, 2014.

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• I do write a lot of prose. It's not disciplined enough yet that it's actually become stories, or short stories. The idea of writing a novel seems impossible.

  PJ Harvey

  Writing, Ideas, Stories

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Well, Bradbury's a genius. Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite books of all time, and The Illustrated Man as a collection of short stories ranks up there. When you read it you realize how influential it is on so many other stories and people.

  Zack Snyder

  Book, Men, People

  Source: ca.complex.com

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• For a sampler, you could try my short story collection "Wireless". Which contains one novella that scooped a Locus award, and one that won a Hugo, and covers a range of different styles.

  Charles Stross

  Awards, Style, Trying

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• I think that too often we, film directors, think that a big epic novel and feature film are the same. It's a lie. A feature film is much closer to a short story actually.

  Pirjo Honkasalo

  Lying, Thinking, Epic

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• You can write anything you want to,--a six-act blank verse, symbolic tragedy or a vulgar short, short story. Just so that you write it with honesty and gusto, and do not try to make somebody believe that you are smarter than you are. What's the use? You can never be smarter than you are.

  Brenda Ueland

  Honesty, Believe, Writing

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• A lot of artists start out as failed poets, then move on to being failed short-story writers before they finally break through to the big time and become failed novelists.

  Gary Reilly

  Moving, Artist, Break Through

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