Top 100 Quotes About Short Stories
#1. 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
#2. Oh, you've made plenty of short stories long. But never, ever, have you made a long story short.
Harlan Coben
#3. The first fiction I ever wrote was short stories. I was writing short stories in my late teens and early twenties, and I think it's how you teach yourself to write.
Jess Walter
#4. I started writing short stories. I tried writing horror, mystery, science fiction. I joined a little critique group here in town and ran my stories past them. After about three years, I tackled my first novel, Subterranean. It took me 11 months to write.
James Rollins
#5. My first five novels were written longhand. So were hosts of short stories.
Jane Lindskold
#6. The only way, I think, to learn to write short stories is to write them, and then try to discover what you have done.
Flannery O'Connor
#7. Every decade, we get a stunning collection of dynamic, heartbreaking short stories. In the past, those collections came from Barry Hannah, Mark Richard, and Thom Jones.
Chuck Palahniuk
#8. I liked these short stories so much, but I couldn't write like this, I didn't have the imagination. I didn't have any imagination at all. Everything I wrote was connected to reality and my own experiences.
Karl Ove Knausgard
#9. The reason I shift gears constantly, why I'm doing an opera, why I've done essays, why I've written poetry for years that nobody wanted, why I do short stories and novels and screenplays ... is so I will have new ways of failing. This means becoming a student again.
Ray Bradbury
#10. When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer.
Joyce Carol Oates
#11. Well, to be honest I think I'm a better short story writer than a novelist. Novels I find very hard, hours and hours, weeks and weeks, of conscious thought - whereas short stories slip out painlessly in a few days.
Eric Brown
#12. Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.
Ray Bradbury
#13. 'The New Yorker's fiction podcast I like a lot, where they have authors pick short stories by other authors that appeared in 'The New Yorker.'
Gillian Jacobs
#14. The rules seem to be these: If you have written a successful novel, everyone invites you to write short stories. If you have written some good short stories, everyone wants you to write a novel. But nobody wants anything until you have already proved yourself by being published somewhere else.
James A. Michener
#15. Third tale (aka short stories) - His name is Sun and Adultery. My husband's is Elias. My children are named Enilson and Joaquim. I want them all to die. Except him. (That first one, light and bed.) I'm very sorry, my God, but there it is. Signed: Lazinha.
Hilda Hilst
#16. I do write a lot of prose. It's not disciplined enough yet that it's actually become stories, or short stories. The idea of writing a novel seems impossible.
PJ Harvey
#17. Reading fiction - excerpts from National Book Award finalists, winners of the Pen/O. Henry Prize for short stories, or even Amazon bestsellers - has been shown to enhance theory of mind:
Margaret Heffernan
#18. There's little question that short stories, like poetry, don't get the respect they deserve in the culture - but what can you do? Like Canute, one cannot fight the sea, you have to go with your love, and hope one day, things change.
Junot Diaz
#19. I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.
Sarah Zettel
#20. Once I started writing novels, I understood how hard it was to write really good short stories.
Elizabeth McCracken
#21. How Are We to Live is a collection of short stories, not a novel. This in itself is a disappointment. It seems to diminish the book's authority, making the author seem like somebody who is just hanging on to the gates of Literature, rather than safely settled inside.
Alice Munro
#23. People who rarely read long books, or even short stories, still appreciate the greatest examples of the shortest literary genres. I have long been fascinated by these short genres. They seem to lie just where my heart is, somewhere between literature and philosophy.
Gary Saul Morson
#24. The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, Death in the Afternoon - as well as all of the short stories that writers studied for the inner trick of them. But there was no trickery: only the plain words put there as if they had always been there - like pebbles cooled in a river.
Naomi Wood
#25. The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers, with hundreds of short stories every month, don't exist. Most of the doors for new people have been sealed.
Donald E. Westlake
#26. I've written short stories from male perspectives before, and I've never had a problem with it as long as I've understood the character's emotions and motivations.
Sara Shepard
#27. Fiction came quite a while later. I began with short stories and fiction for children.
Helen Dunmore
#28. I never wanted to be an editor. I never wanted to be a boss. I just wanted to write, and it didn't make any difference whether it was fiction or nonfiction or short stories or whatever. I just - that's what I was destined to do.
Frank Deford
#29. I love fiction. I like reading short stories. Cupcakes, pop songs, Polaroids, and short stories. They all raise and answer questions in a short space. I like Lorrie Moore. Amy Hempel. Tim O'Brien. Raymond Carver. All the heartbreakers.
Laurel Nakadate
#30. Plays are wonderfully different than short stories, first because it's a story that's on a stage, but there's a different sort of tension that appears on stage - you get to see your characters in a different way - like with lights.
Amy Bloom
#31. To be honest the future of The Life of One Kid... won't go very far... but I won't only put books/films.... and so on and so on... and some short stories I am going to put... from my darkness.
Deyth Banger
#32. New thing is made in writting books, (novels, short stories... stories...)... It's to be build a character which you will love you will like him.... and one moment he dies... isn't it awesome?
Deyth Banger
#33. I had been writing for the 'Late Show' for about four years when I started writing short stories. I had a blast writing the stories because I was writing in a voice more my own, as opposed to a man's. HBO ended up buying four of them. I think that had a direct impact on my decision to write a book.
Jill Davis
#34. I've published several virtually invisible novels and several dozen even more invisible short stories over the years, all of which give me joy - unlike the cumulative experience of seeking publishers for them!
Scott Bradfield
#35. The best short stories and the most successful jokes have a lot in common. Each form relies on suggestion and economy. Characters have to be drawn in a few deft strokes. There's generally a setup, a reveal, a reversal, and a release.
Geraldine Brooks
#36. Poetry, fiction as novels or short stories - these are autonomous as created by their authors. They should stand on their own, like pieces of furniture that should be judged as to their usefulness, elegance.
F. Sionil Jose
#37. I see a correlation between short stories and songs, because of their length and for what they're meant to evoke. Combine certain words with melodies and it all becomes very moving.
Paul Simon
#38. I consider myself a writer. I don't favour any type of writing. I sometimes wish short stories came more easily to me.
James Lasdun
#39. I don't write poetry or short stories. I don't like to write articles usually. I tend to really only want to be focused on writing novels. It's one of the real advantages I've had over the years. I've only been good at one thing. It helps to be limited.
Markus Zusak
#40. 'The Blade Itself' was my first book. Probably I should've tried a few short stories first, but for some reason I decided to begin with Everest.
Joe Abercrombie
#41. I have this uncanny knack of falling for the most irrelevant men,my love story would be comprising of short stories.
Pushpa Rana
#42. [Red Dirt Marijuana] contains most of the great short stories in English that are not by Mr. Hemingway or Mr. O'Hara.
Robert Anton Wilson
#43. I studied the short story as part of my creative writing course at university but then set off as a novelist. Generally, there is a sense that even if you want to write short stories, you need to do a novel first.
Sarah Hall
#44. Many of my better short stories are just the last chapters of novels I did not write.
Roger Zelazny
#45. To be interested in short stories, you have to be interested in fiction as an art form.
Deborah Eisenberg
#46. Short stories that's all it's ever been Don't you worry 'bout the ending Babe, before we begin I have seen the sun That's behind the rain I have felt the joy That's behind the pain.
Harry Chapin
#47. Sometimes I try my hand at turning out small profundities and uncertain short stories, but I always end up with just one single word: God.
Etty Hillesum
#48. Short stories always seem to cost me blood, and I envy the people who do them for fun.
Terry Pratchett
#49. I'm going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.
Jack Kerouac
#50. If a writer writes poems and short stories and novels, but nobody ever reads them, is she really a writer?
Jennifer Weiner
#51. The truth is that the writers who most influenced me weren't people categorized as crime writers. I'd say I learned more from John O'Hara, who isn't much read today but whose short stories I really admired, and Hemingway, who I think has lasted pretty good.
Elmore Leonard
#52. I get stage fright with short stories. For me it feels like standup comedy: kill or die. I'm more confident when I begin a novel because I know I have space to fail.
Sefi Atta
#53. Start with short stories. After all, if you were taking up rock climbing, you wouldn't start with Mount Everest. So if you're starting fantasy, don't start with a nine-book series.
George R R Martin
#54. You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.
Larry Niven
#55. I had a lot of expectations placed on me because I was already having some success with my short stories. That was not a good situation to be in. That by itself took a long time to overcome.
Jess Row
#56. I think most fiction writers naturally start by writing short stories, but some of us don't. When I first started writing, I just started writing a novel. It's a hard way to learn to write. I don't recommend it to my students, but it just happens that way for some of us.
Andrea Barrett
#57. Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories ... cheerfulness would creep in. Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful.
G.K. Chesterton
#58. Short stories are often strong meat. Reading them, even listening to them, can be challenging, by which I do not mean hard work, simply that a certain amount of nerve and maturity is required.
Sarah Hall
#59. The great pleasure for me in writing short stories is the fierce, elegant challenge.
Amy Bloom
#60. You have to be kind of clued into them, they are a world of their own, and most people find them disappointing because the best short stories are not constructed like novels.
Tobias Wolff
#61. When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.
Mario Batali
#62. When I was in college, I wrote poetry very seriously, and then once I had started writing short stories, I didn't go back to poetry, partially because I felt like I understood how incredibly difficult it was.
Elizabeth McCracken
#63. Snuffy and the Bull is one of several short stories from a time in our history which has been woven into the quilt of America and found within the eclectic tapestry of our culture.
Regine' Ivory-Barlow
#65. You want to hear an agent scream, say, 'I'm thinking about doing a collection of short stories set in the Ozarks.'
Daniel Woodrell
#66. I know now why I stopped writing short stories. It was at the point when I recognised how difficult they were.
Brian Friel
#67. I have always loved short stories. I have been at least as influenced by the short story masters as I have been by novelists.
Daniel Woodrell
#68. Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.
V.S. Pritchett
#69. I have spend a lot of time on everything and what's impresses me about people I have written that in short stories as for the whole story, probably it should be here.
Deyth Banger
#70. I started writing about New York as soon as I arrived. I was 19. I used to write short stories and send them out.
Candace Bushnell
#71. In general, short stories are less read than before, they're less published than before and, not surprisingly, they're less taught than before.
Lorin Stein
#72. After I published my first book, my sister, known as Kali Willows, began writing. She fell as in love with it as I did. She has a number of short stories.
Franny Armstrong
#73. I was incredibly determined - I wrote short stories, I wrote the beginnings of novels. I wrote a little children's book and sent it to the editor-in-chief of the children's division of Simon and Schuster and she asked me to write a little children's book for a series she was doing.
Candace Bushnell
#74. Experiments with the "as if" of fiction are often more lively in poetry and criticism and other modes of writing than in weak short stories or novels.
Ben Lerner
#75. I was well traveled, and I created this illusion of literacy through reading and writing. I wrote a book of short stories.
Tom T. Hall
#77. I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice.
Andre Dubus
#78. That's why Tennessee Williams was a great writer. Poetically, dramatically, it was fantastic stuff. And with the landscape, the losers in life populating it. His short stories have got rhythm, something musical about them.
Ciaran Hinds
#79. Rueful, bittersweet, funny, written with tenderness and bite, Merrill Feitell's stories, like so many classic short stories, are made from the plain and painful stuff of this world, and haunted by the possibility, and the impossibility, of a better one.
Michael Chabon
#80. I'm very interested in writing - it just takes so much discipline, whether it's short stories or novels.
Conor Oberst
#81. Sail the main course in a simple sturdy craft. Keep her well stocked with short stories and long laughs. Go fast enough to get there but slow enough to see. Moderation seems to be the key.
Jimmy Buffett
#82. I can't be reading novels when I'm writing a novel, because somebody's voice creeps in. The hardest thing to do is keep the tone and your attitude over the course of a year or however long it takes.But when I'm writing short stories, which I will be doing shortly, I can read anything I like.
T.C. Boyle
#83. Short stories are often treated as the poor cousins of novels.
Christopher Bram
#85. It got to the point where most of my time went toward writing novels. I would still occasionally write short stories, but only when I was commissioned by an editor to write for a themed anthology or special issue.
Tim Pratt
#86. I found that I could write two kinds of short stories: I could write very absurd, kind of surrealistic, funny stories; or I could write very dark, realistic - hyper-realistic - stories. I was never happy with that, because I couldn't meld the two.
Dennis Lehane
#87. I wanted to be a writer, but at the time, I spent my days working a retail job, my nights sleeping in my childhood bedroom, and while I had written short stories here and there, I didn't know how to write good fiction anymore than I knew how to perform good brain surgery.
Anthony Marra
#88. When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing.
Irwin Shaw
#89. Short stories, for me, it's like you step inside this brand new car and you drive it and you drive it into a tree and you walk away from it.
Kevin Wilson
#90. Curiously, there are many perfect short stories, but no perfect novels.
J.G. Ballard
#91. I have written about 240 books and some short stories, too. It's taken me many years.
Eve Bunting
#92. I've heard people speak of themselves as addicted to reading, but I think those people never stole from their family so they could afford this month's serial, or sucked off a sailor for a new book of short stories.
Daniel Polansky
#93. We like to look out on the world and see ourselves, so we have many, many novels, memoirs, and short stories in Iraq that are largely about Americans in Iraq, doing what Americans do.
Elliott Colla
#94. I prefer short stories, but publishers would, of course, rather that writers produce novels, since novels are still more commercially viable.
Charles Baxter
#95. It's tricky to take a book of short stories and turn it into a feature film.
Gia Coppola
#96. I've made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation.
Satyajit Ray
#97. I think of myself as a writer who photographs. Images, for me, can be considered poems, short stories or essays. And I've always thought the best place for my photographs was inside books of my own creation.
Sam Abell
#98. As an actor, there is room for a certain amount of creativity, but you're always ultimately going to be saying somebody else's words. I don't think I'd have the stamina, skill or ability to write a novel, but I'd love to write short stories and poetry, because those are my two passions.
Daniel Radcliffe
#99. My favorite short stories are by Alice Munro, especially her collections 'Carried Away' and 'Runaway.'
Hillary Clinton
#100. I asked Ring Lardner the other day how he writes his short stories, and he said he wrote a few widely separated words or phrases on a piece of paper and then went back and filled in the spaces.
Harold Ross
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