Short Story Quotes - Page 7

• Before World War II, I was living a very cloistered existence, as most cartoonists do. The work I was pouring out did not come from any real, personal life experience; this was all the residue of the accumulation of Rafael Sabatini, O. Henry, all the short-story writers that I'd been reading.

  Will Eisner

  Real, War, Reading

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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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• Hanns Heinz Ewers tells a short story of a boy who was so unnatural of disposition as to take a special delight in people sick with elephantiasis. Our "European intellectuality" finds itself in an identical condition today which, through Jewish pens, worships the Kokoschka, Chagalls and Pechsteins as the leaders of the Art of the future. Features of degeneracy are already apparent, as, for instance, with Schwalbach, who dares representing Jesus as flat footed and bow legged.

  Alfred Rosenberg

  Jesus, Art, Boys

  "The Myth of the Twentieth Century". Book by Alfred Rosenberg, 1930.

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• I was a Teletype operator in the army, so that's where I learned to type. One day, I went downstairs to see if I could still type - I hadn't done it for four or five years after the war. So I typed out a page and I showed it to my wife and she said, "Where did you get this?" I said I wrote it. "You wrote this?" It was something very funny. I went and wrote another page, another couple of pages, and by the time I was finished I had 13 little short stories, humorous short stories.

  Carl Reiner

  Couple, War, Humorous

  "Carl Reiner on writing a children's book, tweeting, and joking around with Mel Brooks". Interview with Katherine Brodsky, tv.avclub.com. June 23, 2015.

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• The events of life have never fallen into the form of the short story or the form of the poem, or into any other form.Yourown consciousnessisthe only formyouneed.

  William Saroyan

  Events, Stories, Form

  1934 The DaringYoungMan on the FlyingTrapeze,'A Cold Day'.

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• My favorite form is the short story. From an aesthetics stand point you really have to pare down to the bone. You can't write a throw-away scene.

  Roger Zelazny

  Writing, Stories, Bones

  "Phlogiston Forty Four: An Interview with Roger Zelazny". Interview by Alex Heatley, Phlogiston Forty Four, 1995.

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• I write short stories. They may appear big in size, but when you consider it, they're four or five novels in one... In return for picking up one of my books, I'm trying to give them value for their money... the goal of writing any book is to create the illusion that what you are reading is reality and you're part of it.

  James Clavell

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Interview with Don Swaim of CBS Radio, 1986.

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• Really, the moment you have any idea, the second thought that enters your mind after the original idea is, "What is this? Is it a book, is it a movie, is it a this, is it a that, is it a short story, is it a breakfast cereal?" Really, from that moment, your decision about what kind of thing it is then determines how it develops.

  Douglas Adams

  Book, Cereal, Ideas

  "Douglas Adams" by Keith Phipps, www.avclub.com. January 28, 1998.

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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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• Though my short stories are the more readable, my novels do have more to say; and they will, if anyone has the patience for it, repay a rereading.

  R. A. Lafferty

  Rereading, Stories, Novel

  "The Alien Critic" Journal, August 1973.

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• [Red Dirt Marijuana] contains most of the great short stories in English that are not by Mr. Hemingway or Mr. O'Hara.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Marijuana, Stories, Red

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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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• Most short stories have but one plot. The very best, however, have what I call a plot-and-a-half – that is, a main plot and a small subplot that feeds in a twist or an unexpected piece of business that ads crunch and flavor to the story as a whole.

  Elizabeth Sims

  Writing, Twists, Plot

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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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• 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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• I've made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation.

  Satyajit Ray

  Two, Long, Stories

  Satyajit Ray, Bert Cardullo (2007). “Satyajit Ray: Interviews”, p.95, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever

  Irwin Shaw

  Story Writers, Stories, My Favorite

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• For me, being a writer was never a choice. I was born one. All through my childhood I wrote short stories and stuffed them in drawers. I wrote on everything. I didn't do my homework so I could write

  Laura Hillenbrand

  Writing, Choices, Childhood

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• But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.

  Jonathan Coe

  Book, Writing, Stories

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• I am also working on a couple of short stories for anthologies. This is new to me and Im enjoying it.

  Judith Guest

  Couple, Stories, Anthology

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• A short story is a writer's way of thinking through experience... Journalism aims at accuracy, but fiction's aim is truth. The writer distorts reality in the interest of a larger truth.

  John L'Heureux

  Reality, Thinking, Fiction

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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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• Long fiction is wonderful and you can lose yourself in it as a reader and as a writer, but short stories don't allow the same kind of immersion. Often the best stories hold you back and make you witness them. This may be one of the reasons some people reject the form. That and the fact that they are harder work to read. A story will not let you get comfortable and settle in. It is like a stool that is so small that you must always be aware of sitting.

  Isobelle Carmody

  Writing, Long, People

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

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