Short Story Quotes

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

~ Gemma Farrow

My name is Patricia Lauren Bordeaux, and I, like my creator before me, am a very lonely vampire.

~ S.c. Parris

He stood just near the club’s steps, his back to me along the foggy English night, and it was not until I’d passed him and began my ascent of the many steps that I’d heard his voice. The voice I knew, in all my years of living upon the Earth, that I would never forget. Even then I had known this. It was the slippery way of his tongue, or perhaps it was the coolness of which his words passed across the air and slid its way into my ears as though they were only meant for me.

~ S.c. Parris

They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes. Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass.

~ Ray Bradbury

Perhaps he found it strange being accompanied by a Chinese-Nigerian arms trafficking pirate, but the Irish priest had just followed me silently on board the covert government transport.

~ Dayo Ntwari

First contact comes not by hand of man, but by metal of machine.

~ Ryan Sean O'reilly

Without direction, the respiratory technician goes to the head of the bed. She takes the tubing, attaches it to the oxygen, and turns it on as high as it will go. She provides a seal with her hand cupped over the plastic mask, over the nose and mouth of the toddler, and methodically provides oxygenated air. Doyle’s tiny chest rises and falls while I listen with my stethoscope. I am reaching for another breathing tube.“Fib!” Dr. Pedras feels for a pulse while another places gelled pads on her chest.

~ Ruth Mcleod-Kearns

[Anger] gave him the soul to keep fighting no matter how many times the world seemed bent on destroying him. He may be a broken young man, but he would never be a defeated one

~ Hannah Heath

He admired bears because everyone was afraid to disturb them while they slept and fish were so in love with bears that they jumper right into their mouths. He ate meat and never felt bad about it unless he saw how the animal was slaughtered or if the meat was not cooked properly but he thought thrice about killing bus.

~ Robb Todd

...And on my fourth morning in Naples, I woke up alone. There was a note on the table with the breakfast that Cinzia had quietly prepared for me. It read, It could never be. But that's why it will always be - perfectly divine. Cinzia City Solipsism: A Short Story

~ Zack Love

From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the River of Silence; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

We pick the people who populate our personal lives as much for who they make us as for who they are. I chose Anna for the person I became in her presence, and in this respect, my love for her was a more selfish one

~ Zack Love

Summer sticks to her skirt sumptuously, in the shiny gray fabric hanging loosely from her curves. Her chestnut eyes, apparently hidden from strangers; her simple but graceful face, unpainted by Madison Avenue; and her straight black hair, parted down the middle without ego, all suggest a minimalist - almost pastoral - beauty that is oddly discordant with her fashionable attire, comfortable indifference to the crowds, and quasi-attentive perusal of the Time magazine unfolded over her hand.

~ Zack Love

While there may not be a book in every one of us, there is so often a damned good short story.

~ Jeffrey Archer

I want to feel like I'm making a difference in this world. And I want some time for living rather than just working. Life is for living, isn't it? It can't be all just for working

~ Zack Love

Reluctantly, he put his hand up to the cold glass. That odd tingling sensation raced through his body again. His ears began to hum and his head felt strange and heavy. Beneath his touch, the glass seemed to soften and his fingers made small indentions in the surface. ~ The Mirror

~ Cassie Mccown

Junk?” Gram gasped. “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure, you know.”“Yeah, well, maybe it’s time to let another man have it, you think?” he teased. ~ The Mirror

~ Cassie Mccown

In her hand was a necklace with a small oval pendant, a half of a locket engraved with one of the same symbols from the mirror frame—what Quinn saw as rolling waves. ~ The Mirror

~ Cassie Mccown

The frame of the mirror was a deep mahogany and carved with an intricate design of what appeared in the dim light to be leaves and vines. The mirror’s surface was clouded with dust and age, so much that Quinn could not even see his own reflection. On impulse, he rubbed a small circle with the back of his wrist but beneath the dust the glass was still milky and unclear. ~ The Mirror

~ Cassie Mccown

Absently, Quinn reached for the sheet to replace it over the aged mirror, but the back of his hand brushed against the cold surface and a strange shiver ran up his arm and down his spine. ~ The Mirror

~ Cassie Mccown

As he carefully made his way back to the stairs and awkwardly turned off the light, he did not notice that the dark shadow he had assumed was his reflection remained in the mirror. He didn’t see the hands press against the surface and make large, liquid-like bulges beneath the glass. Nor did he hear the whispers that so suddenly and violently filled the dark, cluttered space as he had closed and locked the heavy attic door. ~ The Mirror

~ Cassie Mccown

There, in the corner under the window—the window through which he thought he saw movement before—was a slender white foot! Quinn’s heart froze in his chest and frightened bile began working its way up his esophagus. ~ The Mirror

~ Cassie Mccown

For one… If you shoot me and your boss realizes it was without good reason, you’ll have fucked up your trial period. And trust me; I know you’re still in it.” Ian pulled open a drawer in a small brown cabinet.“Secondly, it could end very badly for me and I’d rather prevent that. Getting shot is not on my list of things to do today.” He wrapped his hand around the steel grip of his own weapon and removed it from the drawer.“And last but not least, if you plan to shoot me… Well, it’ll be a matter of which of us is quicker and has better aim.” A pleasant smile crossed his features and he casually waved the gun from side to side. “Do you want to risk it?

~ Natasha Mcneely

The serious writer was aware of a paradox at the heart of his art: his inner world, the place of the strongest stories, was infinite, but it was also embedded in – if this was possible! – an even more infinite universe of all things to write about. It was like seeing the Grand Canyon from outer space – a huge gorge that looked like a thin trickle, impossible to miss, hard to hit.

~ Marcus Speh

A novel is just a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.

~ George Saunders

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

~ Edward Gorey

Well why don't you lean over this counter a little more and give me your best kiss, and then I'll tell you if I want you to take me out to dinner.

~ Zack Love

Without pride, man becomes a parasite – and there are already too many parasites.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Shame comes in different doses.

~ Carla H. Krueger

It’s late and most of the clerks are at home in their beds, dreaming of swimming in pools filled with real money.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Don’t mock my suggestions, Ridley – one day in the near future, they might just save your life.” Maxwell D. Kalist.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Men circle like bees around honey, buzzing to communicate their sexual despair.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Only men with intelligence, confidence and absolutely no empathy at all can progress upstairs.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Every time I so much as blink you get an erection.

~ Carla H. Krueger

To Kalist, Baumauer’s just a timber bridge in need of a good hot fire.

~ Carla H. Krueger

He’s in a side room alone with her and it’s far too fucking hot.

~ Carla H. Krueger

You are a more powerful person than you might have ever imagined.” Maxwell D. Kalist.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Are there not times, Ridley, when you yourself wish only to hear the best in people – and not to be dragged downwards into the underworld we all regularly inhabit?

~ Carla H. Krueger

I’m warning you because you’re young and vulnerable. He’s a dirty, lying, conniving piece of shit and he’s dangerous.” Gottfried Baumauer.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Maxwell D. Kalist is a receiving teller at a city bank, Orwell and Finch, where he runs an efficient department of twenty two clerks and twelve junior clerks. He carries a leather-bound vade mecum everywhere with him – a handbook of the most widely contravened banking rules. He works humourlessly (on the surface of it) in a private, perfectly square office on the third floor of a restored grain exchange midway along the Eastern flank of Květniv’s busy, modern central plaza. Behind his oblong slate desk and black leather swivel chair is an intimidating, three-storey wall made almost entirely of bevelled, glare-reducing grey glass in art-deco style; one hundred and thirty six rectangles of gleam stacked together in a dangerously heavy collage.

~ Carla H. Krueger