Short Story Quotes - Page 6

• McGough: I'm sorry. I'm afraid I've caught poetry. Mr Bones: Oh really? Well, don't worry, sir - I used to suffer from short stories. McGough: Really? When? Mr Bones: Oh, once upon a time...

  Graham Chapman

  Sorry, Worry, Once Upon A Time

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• I think I succeeded as a writer because I did not come out of an English department. I used to write in the chemistry department. And I wrote some good stuff. If I had been in the English department, the prof would have looked at my short stories, congratulated me on my talent, and then showed me how Joyce or Hemingway handled the same elements of the short story. The prof would have placed me in competition with the greatest writers of all time, and that would have ended my writing career.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, Thinking, Careers

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• Don’t let people interfere with you. Boot ’em out, turn off the phone, hide away, get it done. If you carry a short story over to the next day you may overnight intellectualize something about it and try to make it too fancy, try to please someone.

  Ray Bradbury

  Phones, Next Day, People

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• Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel.

  James McBride

  Biographies, Bills, Stories

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• Yes?’ he asked, looking at me over the sheet. ‘I’m a writer temporarily down on my inspirations.’ ‘Oh, a writer, eh?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘No, I’m not.’ ‘What do you write?’ ‘Short stories mostly. And I’m halfway through a novel.’ ‘A novel, eh?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What’s the name of it?’ ‘”The Leaky Faucet of My Doom.”‘ ‘Oh, I like that. What’s it about?’ ‘Everything.’ ‘Everything? You mean, for instance, it’s about cancer?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How about my wife?’ ‘She’s in there too.

  Charles Bukowski

  Cancer, Inspiration, Writing

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• When I was about 13 or 14, I had an English teacher who made a deal with me that I could get out of doing all of the year's regular work if I would write a short story a week and on Friday read it to the class.

  Victor Salva

  Friday, Teacher, Writing

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• I love creating individual short stories within chapters, but I want to get better at building consistent narratives from start to finish.

  David Crabb

  Creating, Get Better, Stories

  "'Morrissey's hair, bongs made of apples, MTV's 120 Minutes': Inside this month's hottest new books". Interview with Teddy Wayne, www.salon.com. May 20, 2015.

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• I should say that, in addition to my tree-love (it was originally called The Tree), it arose from my own pre-occupation with the Lord of the Rings, the knowledge that it would be finished in great detail or not at all, and the fear (near certainty) that it would be 'not at all'. The war had arisen to darken all horizons. But no such analyses are a complete explanation even of a short story.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  War, Tree, Details

  Letter to Caroline Everett, June 24, 1957.

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• Yes sir. You can be more careless, you can put more trash in [a novel] and be excused for it. In a short story that's next to the poem, almost every word has got to be almost exactly right. In the novel you can be careless but in the short story you can't. I mean by that the good short stories like Chekhov wrote. That's why I rate that second - it's because it demands a nearer absolute exactitude. You have less room to be slovenly and careless. There's less room in it for trash.

  William Faulkner

  Mean, Stories, Crafts

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• A poet can feel free, in my estimation, to write a poem for himself. Or a painter can paint a painting for himself. You can write a short story for yourself. But for me, comedy by its nature is communal. If other people don't get it, I'm not sure why you are doing it.

  Keegan-Michael Key

  Writing, People, Stories

  "EXCLUSIVE: Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele Talk Key & Peele Series Premiere". Interview with B.Alan Orange, movieweb.com. January 31, 2012.

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• If you do not have an alert and curious interest in character and dramatic situation, if you have no visual imagination and are unable to distinguish between honest emotional reactions and sentimental approaches to life, you will never write a competent short story.

  Edward Joseph Harrington O'Brien

  Writing, Character, Emotional

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• The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists.

  V. S. Pritchett

  Writing, Novelists, Stories

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• When you send off a short story, it sits on the editor's desk in the same pile with stories by the most famous and honored names in present-day writing-and it's not going to be accepted unless it's as good as theirs. (And it'll probably have to be better.)

  Daniel Quinn

  Writing, Editors, Names

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• If you write a hundred short stories and they're all bad, that doesn't mean you've failed. You fail only if you stop writing.

  Ray Bradbury

  Writing, Mean, Stories

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• Even when there's not a joke or a hook, the first line has to be good and snapem to attention. Songs ain't novels. You don't have 30 pages to slowly wrap somebody in. They're more like short stories or poems. If the first line hasn't grabbed them, you won't get to the second line. Once you've developed an audience, you may have some luxury and trust, so you don't have to knock 'em over the head with line one.

  Dan Bern

  Song, Writing, Luxury

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• Zachary Jernigan's short stories are in deep conversation with the history of the genre while maintaining a thoroughly modern sensibility. Here’s a new writer who has found his voice. Listen to him and enjoy!

  James Patrick Kelly

  Voice, Stories, Maintaining

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• The short story form allows evocation, suggestion, implication. Its potency often lies in what it does not say.

  Isobelle Carmody

  Lying, Writing, Suggestions

  Isobelle Carmody, Nan McNab (2011). “The Wilful Eye (Tales from the Tower Volume One)”, p.3, Allen & Unwin

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• We are not quite novels. We are not quite short stories. In the end, we are collected works

  Gabrielle Zevin

  Stories, Ends, Novel

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• Once you have learned to trust your own voice and allowed that creative force inside you to come out, you can direct it to write short stories, novels, and poetry, do revisions, and so on. You have the basic tool to fulfill your writing dreams. But beware. This type of writing will uncover other dreams you have, too-going to Tibet, being the first woman president of the United States, building a solar studio in New Mexico-and they will be in black and white. It will be harder to avoid them.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Dream, Writing, Black And White

  Natalie Goldberg (2016). “Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within”, p.75, Shambhala Publications

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• Children can't help but create: they need to put their mind on the page, they want to paint, to sculpt, to write short stories.

  Jonah Lehrer

  Children, Writing, Mind

  "Jonah Lehrer: We can all be as creative as Picasso... we just have to learn how". Interview with Tim Lewis, www.theguardian.com. April 14, 2012.

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• Have a short story feature two situations, and then let them solve each other.

  Gene Wolfe

  Writing, Two, Stories

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• Suspense is very important. Even though this is humor and they're short stories, that theory of building suspense is still there.

  Sergio Aragones

  Suspense Novels, Important, Stories

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• I wrote my first short story for a competition and won second prize. Another competition came up and I won first prize. The first story was published in a newspaper. The second went out on radio.

  Ian Rankin

  Competition, Radio, Firsts

  "Gothic Scot". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. March 17, 2001.

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• Within a scantily plotted, novella-style narrative (the movie is an adaptation of a short story by Tom Bissell), single shots become story events that mere mention would spoil.

  Karina Longworth

  Style, Events, Stories

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• The words you can't find, you borrow.
  We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone.
  My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.
  We are not quite novels.
  The analogy he is looking for is almost there.
  We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.
  In the end, we are collected works.

  Gabrielle Zevin

  Book, Heart, Stories

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