Short Story Quotes - Page 21

• I write movies, so - I look at boxing, and I commentated on it, as if I were telling you the story of a movie or a short story.

  Ferdie Pacheco

  Writing, Boxing, Looks

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Don't wait for success, but for the respect and interest of those who read you. At the start it could be a classmate, someone who shares your interests. Before sending off the manuscript for a novel to a publishing house, it would be a good idea to try writing short stories, and publishing them in a local magazine.

  Dacia Maraini

  Writing, Publishing House, Ideas

  "A ‘special’ writer. Dacia Maraini in interview". Interview with Vincenza Fanizza, www.threemonkeysonline.com.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Really, I think among the many mistakes I've made over my life, one of them was caring so much about the short story.

  Charles D'Ambrosio

  Mistake, Caring, Thinking

  Source: quarterlyconversation.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the short stories - if I can make a very lumpy contrast - in the short stories I feel like the lives of the people have a kind of prior desperation and a prior need and my longing is for the story and their lives to somehow come together, even if not finally or forever, to face something; and it felt like a lot of the time with the essays I was wading into situations where there was an assumption of finality of understanding, and I felt like I could wade into any understood moment and tear it apart and make it fall apart.

  Charles D'Ambrosio

  Fall, People, Forever

  Source: quarterlyconversation.com

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• After I published my first book, my sister, known as Kali Willows, began writing. She fell as in love with it as I did. She has a number of short stories.

  Franny Armstrong

  Book, Writing, Numbers

  Source: romancing-the-book.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I get stage fright with short stories. For me it feels like standup comedy: kill or die. I'm more confident when I begin a novel because I know I have space to fail.

  Sefi Atta

  Space, Stories, Comedy

  Source: www.percontra.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I enjoy writing plays most. I haven't written a radio play in a while and I don't write short stories anymore because the process of submitting them depressed me. I really enjoy revising novels, but drafting them can be a pain.

  Sefi Atta

  Pain, Writing, Play

  Source: geosireads.wordpress.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have written about 240 books and some short stories, too. It's taken me many years.

  Eve Bunting

  Book, Taken, Years

  Source: www.scholastic.com

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I lack the skill to hold a story line for the length required for a novel or even a short story. I have never had an idea that could withstand a hundred thousand words, or even ten thousand words of rubber meeting the road.

  Henry Rollins

  Skills, Ideas, Stories

  Source: paulsemel.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I had no intention of replacing Arnold [Schwarzenegger]. There were a few things that made me want to do the movie. They were the script which had a different direction to it, and it was a chance to do a very different Quaid. I didn't read the short story until I went to college.Reading the story had a different effect on me of how I pictured him to be and the tone of the story was different. In the story, he's a bit more of an everyman.

  Len Wiseman

  Reading, College, Different

  4 Copy quote

• Having made films, I know very well that the scope of the average 90- to 120-minute movie is about the same narrative heft as a long short story or a novella.

  Paul Auster

  Average, Long, Stories

  Interview with Gregg LaGambina, www.avclub.com. September 6, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice.

  Andre Dubus

  Short Love, Pain, Believe

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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you are working in an office, where do you find the time to write a novel? But you can finish a short story in five pages. Furthermore, a short story is a perfect place to learn the craft

  Ben Okri

  Writing, Perfect, Office

  4 Copy quote

• Here in Manto's own words that he wanted to mark his grave with: "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful Here lies Saadat Hasan Manto and with him lie buried all the secrets and mysteries of the art of short-story writing.... Under tons of earth he lies, still wondering who among the two is greater short-story writer: God or He.

  Saadat Hasan Manto

  Art, Lying, Writing

  156 Copy quote

• Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.

  Amos Oz

  Writing, Sacrifice, Night

  39 Copy quote

• I’m a poet. And then I put the poetry in the drama. I put it in short stories, and I put it in the plays. Poetry’s poetry. It doesn’t have to be called a poem, you know.

  Tennessee Williams

  Drama, Play, Stories

  Tennessee Williams, David Ernest Roessel (2007). “The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams”, p.21, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I write short stories when a little idea occurs to me, that I know isn't a part of a novel that will stand by itself and should be concentrated.

  Roddy Doyle

  Writing, Ideas, Stories

  "Commitments" Author Pens Short Goodbyes To Youth". Interview with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. May 21, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I would recommend the short story form, which is a lot harder to write since you have to be so careful with words, until there is plenty of time to doodle through a novel

  Anne McCaffrey

  Writing, Stories, Form

  7 Copy quote

• Short stories do not say this happened and this happened and this happened. They are a microcosm and a magnification rather than a linear progression.

  Isobelle Carmody

  Writing, Insightful, Stories

  Isobelle Carmody, Nan McNab (2011). “The Wilful Eye (Tales from the Tower Volume One)”, p.4, Allen & Unwin

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Debasement was limited at first to one’s own territory. It was then found that one could do better by taking bad coins across the border of neighboring municipalities and exchanging them for good with ignorant common people, bringing back the good coins and debasing them again. More and more mints were established. Debasement accelerated in hyper-fashion until a halt was called after the subsidiary coins became practically worthless, and children played with them in the street, much as recounted in Leo Tolstoy’s short story, Ivan the Fool.

  Charles P. Kindleberger

  Fashion, Children, People

  6 Copy quote

• For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.

  Lynn Abbey

  Writing, Stories, Novel

  4 Copy quote

• You can't write a novel all at once, any more than you can swallow a whale in one gulp. You do have to break it up into smaller chunks. But those smaller chunks aren't good old familiar short stories. Novels aren't built out of short stories. They are built out of scenes.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Whales, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• David Burnett was the son of Martha Foley, who edited the Best American Short Stories series. She hired me to work with David and her to read stories for the anthology.

  Terry Southern

  Son, Stories, Anthology

  7 Copy quote

• The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world; there's precious little economic incentive to write one.

  Lawrence Block

  Writing, Stories, World

  4 Copy quote

• To create anything — whether a short story or a magazine profile or a film or a sitcom — is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic. These essays are about that magic — which is sometimes perilous, sometimes infectious, sometimes fragile, sometimes failed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes triumphant, and sometimes tragic. I went up there. I wrote. I tried to see.

  Tom Bissell

  Believe, Magic, Stories

  4 Copy quote