Short Stories Quotes

Are you on crack? Or did I take a righteous bong hit before coming here?

~ Natasha Larry

You need to take some acting classes to learn to hide your huge crush on my husband better

~ Mary Papas

She would keep playing the role of the winner as long as the audience believed her.

~ Mary Papas

A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way.

~ Haruki Murakami

A shrink and a patient switching places. Who is REALLY the boss?

~ Mary Papas

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.

~ Jonathan Carroll

Sometimes I wonder which is worse: To have to kill because it is your job, or to have no remorse for all the murderous things you have done?

~ Jason E. Royle

Sometimes I wonder which is worse: To have to kill because it is your job, or to have no remorse for all the murderous things you have done?

~ Jason E. Royle

I worked all day in back ofa hot van snipping off dog balls, I can cut one more pair. (Dark City Lights)

~ Thomas Pluck

There's comfort in a life lived in circles and its careful, sloping lines.

~ Jared Shaffer

I read your diary. I KNOW

~ Mary Papas

You are in love with my husband. You need some acting lessons to learn to hide it better.

~ Mary Papas

That woman must have been a husky in a previous life.

~ Mary Papas

All that sweetness makes me feel weird. My sister was never the loving type.

~ Mary Papas

A shrink and a patient in a love-hate relationship. Who is REALLY the boss?

~ Mary Papas

The time groaned by as John made a fool of himself. Eventually, he grew numb to the death and sin around him. He even came to enjoy gallivanting cross-country like a true crusader. His name brought tears of joy or pain of anger to those he left in his wake. The result of his own unresolved pain.

~ Solange Nicole

Dunce is completely bald and has a really pointed head so the temptation to get him paralytic on his thirtieth birthday, carry him to the tattooist’s and get a nice big ‘D’ smack bang in the middle of his forehead was too much for me. Trouble is he can’t afford to have it removed so he wears a big plaster over it. Gangs of children tease him.‘What’s underneath the plaster, mister? Show us!’They swear he has a third eye under there. My name is Bill but Dunce calls me ‘Fez’ on account of my hat. I’ve known Dunce for over sixteen years.

~ Mike Russell

Hello. It is Monday. I live in Sun City. Sun City is a city that is entirely contained inside an enormous concrete building in the shape of a sun. Its rays house our living quarters, its circular centre is where we work and shop. No one has ever been outside of the city, it is generally suspected that the environment outside of the city is uninhabitable.

~ Mike Russell

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

~ Susan Engberg

I’ll give you one chance to run,but may your shoulder always whisper in your ear…“It’s best to watch out for men, like me.

~ Ryan Goodrich

The dollar bills attached to her hips fluttered to the rug of the small square stage, like the first flakes of winter in the Bronx. (Dark City Lights)

~ Tom Callahan

Short story collections are the literary equivalent of canapés, tapas and mezze in the world of gastronomy: Delightful assortments of tasty morsels to whet the reader's appetite.

~ Alex Morritt

It may well be that there will be this socialism, Juliana,’ she said, ‘but I can tell you right now that no amount of socialism will make my madam was her own underwear.’ - ‘Aunt Juliana’s Indian

~ Petina Gappah

Just like life, it was over much too soon. And just like life, there weren't any answers. But like that one-in-an-eight-million great New York moment, I didn't need one. (Dark City Lights)

~ Peter Carlaftes

She had been waiting for someone to notice her, like, really notice her. She felt that that was the key, that she would go from the duck to the swan the minute someone recognized her potential. And they would look into her like they were trying to pierce her eyes with theirs, like they were trying to make her heart stop, and the whole world would become background noise and she would take her first breath after all of these years of nothing but existing. It would be like a coronation, or a star exploding, and then she would be born. She would be alive, and she would be loved.

~ Rose Fall

You were just a young girl not wanting to let on that death could happen to one who hadn't even lived yet.

~ Katherine Sloan

Flora went to the cinema every day that week. She saw the same movie each day, and wore the same dress.

~ Angela Sloan

I just want to always be here. In this place. Right here, right now.

~ Xingyue Sarah He

I like to see you in a sari, with your long hair dressed in a single plait. Don't forget that I married a girl from India because I like my wife to be conservative and feminine.

~ K. Kanagalatha

The city was a hive from this height, the people and the yellow cabs moving about in the street below like pre-programmed insects. (Dark City Lights)

~ David Levien

Maybe the price of forgetting that even in America, even in New York City, when a man back home is talking, you better listen closely.

~ Brian Koppelman

Maybe the price of forgetting that even in America, even in New York City, when a man from back home is talking, you better listen closely. (Dark City Lights)

~ Brian Koppelman

Davey Boy's Dead was given a new lease on life when doctors transplanted the Dynamite Kidney into his body. That new lease on life came to a sudden and rather hilarious end when the Dynamite Kidney exploded and tore a hole in Davey Boy's side. - The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Zombies

~ Darrin Mason

Fuck your honour, Kaisheen. You are the smartest man I know, yet you had me travel three days during winter to have my counsel. Are you making a move on the Emperor? If you are, you’ll have my full support and the backing of the Monasteries.

~ Paul W.s. Bowler

The cell door opened. My hands went to my eyes. Why was the door opened? I wasn’t dead yet. I think.

~ Paul W.s. Bowler

The hurts from my last day with my father are healed now, but I want to remember where they were; I want to remember what I escaped for as long as I live.

~ Veronica Roth

I think it is the art of the glimpse. If the novel is like an intricate Renaissance painting, the short story is an impressionist painting. It should be an explosion of truth. Its strength lies in what it leaves out just as much as what it puts in, if not more. It is concerned with the total exclusion of meaninglessness. Life, on the other hand, is meaningless most of the time. The novel imitates life, where the short story is bony, and cannot wander. It is essential art.

~ William Trevor

Short stories are often treated as the poor cousins of novels.

~ Christopher Bram

Now and then I am asked as to ‘what books a statesman should read,’ and my answer is, poetry and novels – including short stories under the head of novels.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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