Quotes about short-stories

Gabrielle chuckled, her dark eyes twinkling. “So he’s been after you, has he? Poor Etta, pursued by a sun priest offering to pleasure—” “Every nook and cranny,” Marietta interrupted dryly and Gabrielle tipped her head back with a throaty laugh.

The weakness of a man is the strength of a woman

Love does not choose belief, place, time, situations, or race. love happens between two souls.

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.

Lipstick never lasted long when they were together; he would always kiss her after she had applied it, as if he liked the smearing viscous sensation. Sometimes she felt sure it was discomposing her that he enjoyed.

You're never too old to laugh at stories about love and sex.

This daemon loves men whose marriage beds have grown cold, so she can set them ablaze.

Only the foolish, blinded by language's conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it's melancholy rim, green in it's envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it's greatest rages, black.

For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably.

I’d always hated cocktail parties. And this one was worse than most. Overdressed pseudo–people smiled plastic smiles, told one–upmanship stories with phony self–deprecation, then half–listened with painted–on sincerity to the one–upmanship rebuttals. Mannequins. Robots. Androids. Pseudo–people laboring in the vineyards of pseudo–intellectualism to gather the bitter grapes of self–aggrandizement.

There’s an immense dramatic possibility in describing that universe. The books, for me, were an enormous relief in that sense of how they were written to allow primary emotion, elemental emotion, to matter enormously but to give the thing an extraordinary flow so you don’t notice at what point that you’re actually overwhelmed by this. There’s no showiness, at all. It’s the opposite of showiness. I think, if it was a painting, it could be very grey abstract, almost, with some lines and very, very

The sultan had enormous eyebrows, fibrous like angora wool. In moments of strife, his eyebrows twitched violently. Like now!His Excellency’s royal blood boiled. Once again another mesmerized American news anchor gushed about Dubai’s vision, hailing the imagination of the al-Maktoum family.“Where is this vision coming from?” probed Katie Couric.“Ignorant Yankee!” Sultan Mo-Mo’s British twang bore traces of Basil Fawlty.The sultan wanted to retch. Dubai’s showboating gave him indigestion, but he c

This is new territory; a bridge between the conservative and conventional lit mag tradition and those colourful speculation-driven pamphlets that you find in stacks by the coffee-shop door, full of zombies and vampires and crashing space ships. This is a serious journal with a wide aesthetic.

One day, I decided to be an island. I took off my clothes and walked into the sea, then floated there, bobbing along with the tide, suspended by my inflatable tube and water wings.

I remember clearly the afternoon that she stood at the corner beside the door of the tourist centre in Gdansk.

The four of us got back into the car. In an instant, I distinctly heard a “soundless music”. It was the melody of friendship, the sound of a perfectly tuned quartet who got together by chance, four hearts playing in harmony.

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

Rebecca woke up with her knees hurting and her fingers ice-cold, and the specifics of her life returned to her as the dream disappeared: weekend, hotel room, Baguio, memory, memory, memory.

But we will not bury our mother. We have no interest in putting her bones in soft ground, no desire for memorials and platitudes, no feelings attached to the organic detritus of her terminated existence.

Any moment now, I thought, he was going to wake up. Any moment.

Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns.

Somebody will beat both [contents and price] sooner or later because that is good old Free Enterprise, where the consumer benefits from battles between jolly green giants.

Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency—a chaos—, an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end life as we know it but for the fact that this very story is written, this order found, this style determined, the worst averted, and we are beneficiaries of that order by being readers.

Quote from “FUTURE GONE”: "…I wonder what actually this hospital is, why I am in it and who I am. I have no time to find out. I die, with my arms stretched towards the spotlights.Then whiteness.My body is still there somewhere…Buried in the extremely bright lights of empty hope".

Quote from “Unexpected Tales from the Ends of the Earth”: “The only one everlasting love is the unrealized one. The love to this thing that you’d never had. Behind it is hidden the love to your own ego and feelings".

Inside the room there sat a rocker, which she sat on, and which had rocked her while she sipped the beer, because in spite of herself she had become so giddy to have so quickly relieved her heart that she allowed herself to lean backwards while in the rocker, which had made it possible for the rocker to rock her, although it was not her intention to be so rocked. Also there stood an ironing board with a still hot iron on it that was burning a yellow shift, and there was, among several items that

She looked at me like I was stupid, the same look the girls in JC used to give me when I hadn’t heard of the latest boy band, or turned up at Zouk wearing unfashionable clothes.

The child came to a stop beside her mother and stared up at her face as if she had never seen it before. It was the face of the new misery she felt, but on her mother it looked old and it looked as if it might have belonged to anybody, a Negro or a European or to Powell himself. The child turned her head quickly, and past the Negroe's ambling figures she could see the column of smoke rising and widening unchecked inside the granite line of trees. She stood taut, listening, and could just catch i

While he sweated out a story she bled put a poem. (Dark City Lights)

Forgiving himself came easy to him. His, he'd come to realize, was a forgiving nature.

Perhaps she moves too slowly now, or the world moves too fast for her. She enters the lift, a giant wheel turns and steel cables lower the mechanized box. The lift drops down a black shaft, which exists at the heart of each HDB block. The country may be described, not as a place covered with blocks of public housing, but a topography where black vertical shafts, some forty storeys tall, rise out of the ground like trees.

There are myriad kisses in a relationship: desperate ones as involuntary as breathing, stolen ones on crowded trains, ceremonial ones at the front door, routine ones as dispassionate as licking an envelope. It takes two to kiss, but does it take two to hold the memory?

Soon I find myself squatting on the floor. I am still striking my face; not with my fists this time, but with wide-open hands. I am slapping myself. The sounds I make when my palms meet my cheeks are like an unrelenting round of applause. I am clapping myself. Or clapping for myself. I start to giggle.All the voices are receding now. I am no longer filled with rage or disappointment. I clap and clap and simply cannot stop.

She remembered the way the damp, coarse sand had clumped to her legs and hands, and burrowed beneath her nails and into the folds of her clothes, and she had wondered why the British children in her storybooks were always excited about going to the beach—just as now she wondered why the light from the lighthouse seemed to be coming from the landward side of the expressway. “I thought a lighthouse is out at sea.

His wife had also studied art in her hometown, and she could paint, but depending on such work for her livelihood was just not possible. As far as appearances went, she was definitely a real beauty. When she was young, she looked a little like Gong Li, but now that she was middle-aged, she had put on weight and gradually taken on more of a bell-shaped look, resembling Li Siqin. But no matter what, a wife always looks better than her balding, broadbellied husband.

Dear family,I am drafting a new laundry protocol for better and more considerate usage of the washing machine

The day the earth-moving machines arrived, it was as if aliens had invaded Earth. Overnight they appeared, diggers with huge scoops, plodding their slow and ancient ways across the landscape. By the next week they had multiplied and evolved into diverse forms—cranes with long arms, bulldozers and levellers, an assortment of lorries. All day they worked towards some unseen design, creating and removing debris, their latticework of tracks remaking and writing over the space. Untenanted and vulnera

The exhausted earth groaned and quivered under the monotonous glare of the sun. Spirals of heat rose from the ground as if from molten lava. A panting lizard crawled painfully over the fevered rock in search of a shady crevice. Cattle and dogs cringed under the scanty shade of the trees and waited for the rain to deliver them from the heat and thirst. Instead the heat grew more intense and oppressive each day, singeing and stifling all living things with an invisible sheet of fire, which only th

If freedom is free and none need worry, then what blood drops for thee?

How is it possible you have caught me off guard, he seemed to ask. Exactly where have I miscalculated the velocities, how have I misjudged the vectors?

We awoke to a fabulation of ice, the sun shining like a weapon, light rocketing off every surface except the surfaces of the Army's clean streets and walks.

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

Poems are surmountable. They have rhymes and rhythms to help you make meaning. They're short enough. . . to read and reread until you've made some sense of them. Short stories are a different ballgame. You read them and understand the words completely. You know what happens in each sentence. You follow the dialogue and action. at the end, you know exactly what's happened. And also you have no idea.

Never forget,' says Sugar Daddy, 'we are a nation built on sugar. It is our history and it is the source of our prosperity, now and in the future.'This is true. Our entire nation sits on reclaimed land made from sugar. Ours is an island that rose out of the sea, built on a hard core of toffee.

Quote from “FUTURE GONE”:“…I set the house on fire. It’s dark outside. The fire tears down the darkness. I turn my back to the place and leave, not knowing where. And suddenly I understand…All dreams are dead now”.

I'm looking for something new to believe in that isn't the way people yearn at night in the city.

She resents the chipped paint of the table and the dingy closet they call a dressing room. (Dark City Lights)

Why is it so hard? It's hard because it matters, I think.

I have this uncanny knack of falling for the most irrelevant men,my love story would be comprising of short stories.

If I'd learned nothing else in my twenty-seven years on this planet, I'd learned that when someone gives you something totally unexpected and undeserved, you don't ask questions.

If I'd learned nothing else in my twenty-seven years on this planet, 'd learned that when someone gives you something totally unexpected and undeserved, you don't ask questions. (Dark City Lights)

This town of churches and dreams; this town I thought I would lose myself in, with its backward ways and winding roads leading to nowhere; but, I found myself instead. -Magic in the Backyard (excerpt from American Honey)

History is finite-there's only so much you can learn about a six square block historic district in New York City. (Dark City Lights)

WORSHIP IS ACTION.Worship is not lazy, boring and sad.Worship is zealous, famous and joyful.Psalm 66:1-2Shout joyfully to God, all the earth; Sing the glory of His name; Make His praise glorious.1 Corinthians 6:20For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.Psalm 107:32Let them extol Him also in the congregation of the people, And praise Him at the seat of the elders.

I live in a house over there on the Island, and in that house there is a man waiting for me. When he drove up at the door I drove out of the dock because he says I’m his ideal.

She shuffled with her head bowed, her dark eyes drifting to avoid contact, and she screamed in bed at night. (Dark City Lights)

Later, as she drove the children to school, she thought how worn the grooves were along which they moved their quarrels. She could feel herself saying all the clichéd phrases of a thousand injured women before her, but she could never stop herself. - ‘The Negotiated Settlement

He had to die someday too. He might do it on sheets with a six-hundred-plus thread count, but he'd die just the same. Death wouldn't forget about him.

The first thing you lose when you die is your motor skills.

One evening, after a particularly terrible row, the prince smashed his princess over the head with an old wooden clock and she tumbled to the floor, dead.

In high school, she’d been the loner fat girl and I’d been the asshole jock. There had always been something between us; we had gotten on so easily. I remember being both confused and upset that when I’d finally experienced that thing everyone called chemistry, it had been with her of all people.

Our passing interrupted the road crossing, and the crowd bunched on both sides waited for us to go by as we all waited for the war to go by, thinking we can suspend or postpone living and not knowing that in war the heart grows older than it does in dreams

He cupped her face and held her still, as he looked into her brown eyes; she was all flash and no bang. She talked big, but when it came down to it, she was a simple girl.

This was a great idea; he needed to go into tonight knowing that this was the last time he would ever be with Barry. He needed to savour it and enjoy it, to lock it tight in his memories, so that he would never forget how it felt to be with him.This would be his final goodbye.~ A Case of the Ex

Get your sticky fingers away from my cookies,” Ben ordered, without turning his head, to see Jaxton trying to steal one from the cooking tray.“You weren't saying that last night,” Jaxton retaliated, coming up to Ben's side, to give him a nudge. They were both smiling, while looking down at the counter, where Ben was making his delicious rosemary cookies. “In fact, I seem to remember you grabbing my sticky fingers and putting them in your mouth,” he teased, speaking quietly, so that Lyon wouldn't

Jaxton smiled and caught his hand, holding it tight in both of his. “Are you burnt out? Is it all too much?” he asked, getting straight to the root of the matter, in one go.“Yes,” he sighed, hating that it was true.“Then you'll stay home.”“You know I can't. It's impossible,” Roman complained about the unfairness of it all.He was due to return to the studio in two days times, to finalise the tracks he'd recorded yesterday. Then he had to sit down with Jalen next week, to pick out a new piece of h

Chocolate makes everything better, in the end,” he announced, and Thayer fully agreed.Thayer gave him a smile of gratitude and watched Castel lift his spoon from the saucer. He dipped it, gracefully, into his coffee and gave it a light stir.“Too many people rush to stir such delicate flavours. Take too long and they will clog together to become a lump of bitterness in your coffee. But take your time and be gentle with them,” Castel explained, quietly, “and they will create a symphony of flavours

He was getting undressed and it snapped something inside of him that had been drawing taut, ready to break for months.“I'm hungry, Bruno,” he said, in a soft voice, as he removed the shirt from his broad shoulders, revealing a perfect sight of smooth dark skin. “I can't wait for dinner,” he continued, with a smile.When he put his hands to the fastening of his trousers, Bruno let out a sigh and put the take out menus on the counter. He couldn't look at him, because he knew Lyon was trying to sedu

We should follow every supply that runs into the particular lake below, going upstream in terms of we can. When we do not find Drakes’ path, or even an additional, we should come back straight along,look yourself upward an additional way to obtain foods,and then do a similar for the next water for the south.

Each day Marda gets closer. The sub circles coral reefs off the coasts, where mermaids are said to like the colors of the schools of fishes, and train them to swim around their necks like jewelry or live behind their ears, beneath their long hair. Sometimes mermaids like shallow places, but mostly they like the dark and the beautiful, uncharted, abandoned, soulless parts of the undiscovered world.

Then why are you still here?” I ask. I stand up and her gun follows me. I welcome its bullets just to see if I could survive.“Masochism.”“I don’t know what that means.”“It means I like my own pain.”“That doesn’t make sense.”“I’m human. You think we ever make sense?

Sometimes I help him out and sometimes he helps me out, and sometimes he tries to push me through the wall. (Dark City Lights)

I'd started calling my parents but only when I knew they wouldn't be home.

With more time spent in their mother's presence, Maggie kept topics of conversation to small stuff, seldom ever wanted to dig below the surface, learned from her mother: just be polite, which makes Callie's own facile mental questioning and creative drive, paired with her physical rigidity, all the more oppositional, and, how they dance around serious subjects, laughable.

Thank you father, thank you. I know you watched me from above and protected me. I promise I shall serve the Magnarian Confederation with all my body and soul. I shall dedicate myself fully to our confederation, the family that you so loved. And I love it too. I shall protect, love and respect it always. This is my promise and commitment. Thank you

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

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

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves. If it wasn't for our longing for these things, I doubt the novel or the short story would exist in its current form. I'm not going to say much more on the topic. Just remember: In dictatorships, only one person is really allowed to speak. And when I write a book or a story, I too am the only one speaking, no matter how I hide behind my characters.

My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short stories are like guideposts to my heart...

For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave any of us out.

When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.

She knew breaking up with Ethan was going to be a full-time job because being in a relationship with him had also been a full-time job.

Do you mind?” she asked.“Mind what?”“While you were looking in the mirror I couldn’t help myself and I began fantasizing about you. And I figured if I was going to continue to fantasize about you, the only polite thing to do was to ask your permission. So now I’m doing the polite thing again and asking, ‘do you mind?’”“No, Nina. I don’t mind at all.”Then she leaned down and kissed him.

The rain still drummed on the roof, like fine needles striking the shingles. The family sat silently around the table, each one wrapped in their own thoughts.It was Matthew’s voice that broke the silence, asking, “And what happened after that?”“After that,” said Paul, “came Gettysburg.

I watch people sometimes, wonder how they can walk around with the weight of what they know.

You can't kill an idea the way they try to. You can keep it down awhile, but sooner or later it'll come out. Now what you've got to understand is that the wheel's not evil. Never mind what the scared men all tell you. no discovery is good or evil until men make it that way." -The Wheel, John Wtndham

Will Cato's alien buddies come en masse and invade Earth? He's not sure but he'll try to keep humanity in the loop.

Lost Cactus is a cornucopia of sights, sounds and inhabitants completely foreign to a little squirrel like Sammy, but attempting to set him straight will only complicate matters.

Ty is green but never with envy. Best of all, he's usually available to help move a heavy piece of furniture.

Bentley is a good bee with a shaky sense of direction and an appetite for mayhem. Just don't call him a drone. He hates that.

Lost Cactus is simply an urban myth.

I live in different worlds. One world where I perform my duty as a part of society. My favorite is my world. The writing's world.

He'd wanted to mend her just like his mother had mended his favorite teddy bear when his arm had come loose after too much play. He offered her his pudding cup instead.

A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

Just tell yourself they're only stories. Pamela K. Kinney (Spectre Nightmares and Visitations)

It’s a case of mistaken identity. It’s one big mistake. You weren’t even in the country when it happened.”Maja in the short story 'Metro' by Steen Langstrup

On the outside, I 'm a husband and a father to three sons. I end to keep quiet and stay to myself. That way I stay out of trouble as much as possible. Some people say I'm almost too quiet but it's like that saying goes, it's the quiet ones you have to watch out for...