The Short Story Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about The Short Story

The Short Story Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational The Short Story quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

Lim Oh Kee kills himself in the early hours on the 12th day of December, 1921. His last meal is rice and nothing. — Evan Adam Ang

The heart's the trouble. It knows the monster but remembers the love. — Gemma Farrow

When you are falling short in vocabulary to explain the emotion in your story.Than you are writing the right story — Tushar Upreti

There is no modern literary form which is as little understood as is the short story. The — Charles Raymond Barrett

Another family crisis: The rabbit goes blind. — Jacob M. Appel

She craved a family, not having had enough of one to understand what a pain in the ass it was. — Maile Meloy

The Daily Herald did a short story on a May twenty-fifth accident and named Greg Lucas as the victim. — Joelle Charbonneau

I feel myself collapse inside as if the life force has been sucked out of me. — Siobhan Davis

I need to master the art of talking to her before I can even contemplate anything else. — Siobhan Davis

Fiction cannot betray the truth. Though it must try"...As said by Ernest Hemingway in "Blast"...The first short story in "Bullet". — Christopher J. Pumphrey

I did so want to hear a singer. I miss the sound of a woman's voice, the way they look and smell. — J.A. Willoughby

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.
[Letter to Harrison Blake; November 16, 1857] — Henry David Thoreau

I knew little about short story writing then so it was rough going, but I did find the experience very memorable. — Haruki Murakami

The best way to make a long story short is to stop listening. — Evan Esar

Long story short: I don't know shit about whatever dancing monkey of the moment is amusing the plebes. — Antonio Garcia Martinez

Everything has to be pulling weight in a short story for it to be really of the first order. — Tobias Wolff

I wait, you play. You speak, I cave. I promise, you break. You game me, daily, you play me. — Coco J. Ginger

One of the last courses I taught was on the Russian short story, which I love. — Tobias Wolff

Courier 12 is the Type-O blood of fonts - works just as good for a 'N.Y. Times' op-ed as a screenplay or a short story. — Andrew Vachss

That's what I love about the short story. You are naked on the page. There is nowhere to hide. — Jay Caselberg

The reader really has to step up to the plate and read a short story. — Tobias Wolff

Geo, let me tell you a short story. Nanny State married Big Brother and then they sat back and bathed in the power ...and counted the cash. Smiling — John F. Leonard

With short stories, the story-teller must have a story to tell, not merely some sweet prose to take out for a walk — Herbert Gold

At the end of every short story the reader should feel as if a cloud has been lifted from the face of the moon. — Michael Chabon

If somewhere I am honest that's in the "On The Record", short story, but can you handle it? — Deyth Banger

As the wind continued to howl and groan through her decaying body, she began to sing her story. — Ken Liu

It's the first instance where I believe that it might actually be wrong, the first time I feel like a bit of a creep. — Siobhan Davis

The film was based on a short story written by a customs officer, and was based on his experiences. — Anupama Chopra

A short story is what you see when you look out of the window. — Mavis Gallant

I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels. — Nell Freudenberger

Originally, 'The Windup Girl' started as a short story - a very gnarly, complicated short story set in Bangkok that didn't work very well. — Paolo Bacigalupi

A short story is a messenger from beyond mere thought, that wanders the Earth knocking on doors, praying for a soul that will let it in. — Richard Small

I'm very happy - if I can do even a little bit of work to get the short story out more, I'm thrilled. — George Saunders

Our aim is to make the world more beautiful than it was when we came into it. It can be done. You can do it
love yourself — Kurt Vonnegut

I have some other novels I want to write. I have a lot of short stories - I love the short story. — George R R Martin

I loved them all equally, from the short story, to the poem, to the play, for nothing could touch me so deeply as a well-placed word. — Cheryl Anne Gardner

I saw sunrises fade and burn among fleets of sparks. The moon blossomed
like a lily carved of bone ...
The Death of the Astronaut, page 390. — Lewis Turco

Ariana strikes me as the type of girl who is attracted to authenticity. — Siobhan Davis

She looked at me as if I might be one of them a spy from the world of the ignorant. — Dan Chaon

As a form, the picture book has a similar elegance to the short story. — Gabrielle Zevin

Felicia's Journey by the Irish short-story writer and novelist William Trevor. — Will Schwalbe

I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story. — Annie Proulx

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short. — Abraham Maslow

I still write the occasional short story, and poked at a novel once, but it's just not what I want to do. — George Murray

The times have changed and now the story is old, but yet it all remains the same, a victim in the cold. — Stephen Harker

The short story ... is the most democratic of all the arts; anyone may tell a story, and if it is an absorbing one someone will listen. — Hallie Burnett

The short story feels like the most natural length for prose fiction, or certainly for the kind of ideas and situations I like to encounter. — Nicholas Royle

I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel. — Alice Munro

The short story, it's not a step on the way to becoming a novelist. — Stephen Graham Jones

A subplot is a distinguishing characteristic of the novel; the short story, for example, does not need subplots. — Darin Strauss

I'm not named after the character,' she said. 'I'm named after the entire opera. — Julie Orringer

The American girl isn't ANY girl; she's a remarkable specimen in a remarkable species. — Henry James

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

They were each like a mirror for the other, reflecting the changes in themselves. — Haruki Murakami

And Elvex said, "I was the man." - In "Robot dreams" (Short story) — Isaac Asimov

The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side. — Emma Donoghue

The Diary of Nancy Grace Part 3 -A Short Story Written by- Starlette Summers — Starlette Summers

A short story is something that you can hold in your mind. You can really analyze how the entire thing works, like a machine. — Chuck Palahniuk

A short story is simplification to the highest degree — Henry Seidel Canby

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

The more original a short-story writer, the odder looking the assortment of things he or she puts together for a story. — Carol Bly

The makers of the short story have rarely been good novelists. — V.S. Pritchett

Long story short: The end. — Paul F. Tompkins

A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick
a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart. — Neil Gaiman

And that's the bottom layer in old boxes: melancholy, an indefinable sense of loss. You dig around and it comes swirling up to the top — John Ajvide Lindqvist

Exactly. You like me. The word you use was like. You'll find someone better than me. Someone you'll love and not just like. — Kristine Cuevas

I wondered how it could be that people could love God and hate one another. — Julie Orringer

Shh, mi amor. The neighbors will hear and call the police. — Kate Richards

Of course you know him. Everyone knows a pear-shaped man. — George R R Martin

happened - but I am pretty sure my unconscious mind played a role in it all. Well, to make a long story short, the cat — Leslie Riopel

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story. — Lynn Abbey

The Scottish sun, shocked by having its usual cloudy underpinnings stripped away, shone feverishly, embarrassed by its nakedness. — Stuart Haddon

Some writers keep a tighter rein on that than others. For short story collections I'm definitely in the loose-rein camp. — Roy Kesey

Novels certainly have their charms, but the most elegant creation in the prose universe is a short story. — Gabrielle Zevin

I'm actually writing a short story about a photographer who went completely insane trying to take a close up photo of the horizon. — Steven Wright

The only way to know life is living it. — John Northcutt Young

My whore of a brother has done it again." "Then, as always, orders me to clean up the mess." "I think I hate him." Poseidon to his brother, Zeus. — Yelle Hughes

The only thing I know anything about are my own fantasies and anxieties. I don't trust my eyes. I consider myself to be a short-story writer. — Duane Michals

Regalverborgenheiten" word found in Gabriele Wohmann's short story "Die Feindin" meaning the comforting seclusion of being surrounded by book cases. — Gabriele Wohmann

First contact comes not by hand of man, but by metal of machine. — Ryan Sean O'Reilly

My first short story sale was to a magazine that sat on the story forever ... and never did publish it. — Cullen Bunn

She had a new secret, the strenght of the moon, looking at her — Susan Engberg

His lips turned upward. Man told you to lick salt off me, but he didn't say where you would be licking the salt from. — Elizabeth Morgan

The short story is the literature of the nomad. — John Cheever

If a story is only what it seems to be about, then somehow the author has failed. — Edward Gorey

The short story, on the other hand, is the perfect American form. — Tobias Wolff

Well, how did you die, then?" the old man finally asked.
"Die?" Matthew threw back. "Are you crazy? I'm not dead. I'm just very late. — J. Tonzelli

She was the curator of her marriage, collector of swift quotes and unremarked-upon sensations. — Laura Furman

If you're short on time, that would be the two-word version of our story: we fell. — Karen Russell

A failed short story is a few weeks of fruitless work; a failed novel is a dead child. — The New York Writers Workshop

They were really children that morning. By nightfall none of them were.

First line from Patrick's short story - The Quarry-gang Kids. — Patrick McCusker

A short story is ... frequently the celebration of character at bursting point. — V.S. Pritchett

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

Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived. — George Saunders

Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story. — Dan Chaon

Matchsticks A Not Quite the Fairy Tale Short Story May Sage — Aimee Easterling

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit. — David Sedaris

Just how good are you?"
He kissed her. "I'll let you be the judge of that. — Kate Douglas

A story is about a single moment in a character's life when a definitive choice is made, after which nothing is the same. — John L'Heureux

If [a short story author's] very initial sentence tend not to the out bringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. — Edgar Allan Poe