Short Story Quotes

The short story is the literature of the nomad.

Readers tend to devour short stories on a newssheet, but would be disinclined to read them in collections

I still read Hemingway. I still read his short stories because they're so good. He doesn't waste any words.

I started a short story but it was so dreary that even my pen threw up.

You could omit anything if you knew that the omitted part would strengthen the short story and make people feel something more than they understood

every short story is an experiment - what one must ask is not only, did it come off, but was it, as an experiment, worth making?

Most of my short stories are fantasy.

In general, short stories are less read than before, they're less published than before and, not surprisingly, they're less taught than before.

What you can do with a short story that you can't do with a novel is punch someone in the gut, in the best of ways.

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

So, short stories have an even harder time, because they tend to get read during the day, between other things. They're interstitial. And yet the content of short stories tends to be very much "nighttime" content.

The effect produced by a short story depends almost entirely on its form.

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs.

I write short stories. I write every day.

I've written some short stories about my personal experience, but it's not something you can use everywhere. Every novel, every work of fiction, needs its own food.

I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.

I wrote short stories when I was a teenager, but they weren't any good and I kinda knew it.

I've written over 100 short stories. You could say I'm obsessed with short stories.

In a general sense, to convert any short story, novel, play, or opera into a movie, you have to re-rig it. Even though they're all narratives over time, they're very different forms.

Most publishers seem very reluctant to publish short story collections at all; they bring them out in paperback, often disguised as novels.

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

A short story is simplification to the highest degree

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