Top 100 Short Fiction Quotes
#1. For years, I felt I was a novelist, but now I know I can write short fiction.
Jill McCorkle
#2. THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF ORSON SCOTT CARD Experience Card's full versatility, from science fiction to fantasy, from traditional narrative poetry to modern experimental fiction.
Orson Scott Card
#3. When I first started writing, I did mostly short fiction, and I'd work on a short story and get near to being done and have no idea what I'd work on next, and then I'd panic.
Ann Leckie
#4. The stories in Get In Trouble confirm once again that Kelly Link is a modern virtuoso of the form-playful and subversive required reading for anyone who loves short fiction.
Jeff VanderMeer
#5. I come from a short fiction background, and my mom is a poet, so I've always read poetry; I've always had a lot of different influences both linguistically and musically.
Lorde
#6. I was looking at a lot of experimental writers, and I was very intrigued by short-short fiction, writers who would write little things, what I call buttons now, little vignettes.
Sandra Cisneros
#7. Thus far, I've devoted my entire career to publishing genre short fiction, but I now look forward to applying that same level of curation to finding the best new novels and new authors.
John Joseph Adams
#8. Short fiction is like low relief. And if your story has no humor in it, then you're trying to look at something in the pitch dark. With the light of humor, it throws what you're writing into relief so that you can actually see it.
Elizabeth McCracken
#9. I often give this metaphor where I say that writing short fiction is like surfing, while writing a novel is like navigating with your car. So when you navigate with your car, you want to get somewhere. When you surf, you don't want to get somewhere, you just don't want to fall off your board.
Etgar Keret
#10. Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision, the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that, though lacking a novel's length, satisfies the reader.
Ron Rash
#11. I love the idea that more people would read short fiction. I think it's such a humanizing form. It softens the boundaries between people.
George Saunders
#12. We get so many people saying short fiction is not economical, that it doesn't sell; but there are so many of us enjoying writing it and reading it. So it's wonderful to be around people who love short fiction too - it's like hanging around with my tribe.
Junot Diaz
#13. Calling a piece of short fiction a "tale" removes it at least slightly from the realm of mundane works and days, as it evokes the world of the folk tale, the wonder tale, and the long-ago teller of tales.
Margaret Atwood
#14. For me it's a remarkable thing that there is a prize celebrating and honouring and making for a brief moment short fiction the centre of the literary universe.
Junot Diaz
#15. Oh, I love to read more than anything. I always love the 'New Stories From the South' anthologies - I think it's the best short fiction collection anywhere, just filled with treasures.
Lucy Alibar
#16. Topiary has always seemed like a good occupation, comparable in some ways to writing short fiction.
Kelly Link
#17. A lot of times in my short fiction there isn't much dramatized scene - there are a lot of short, interconnected bits, snippets of conversation, continual action, and so on. I frequently rely pretty heavily on voice.
Dan Chaon
#18. I send all my short fiction to 'Ontario Review' because Joyce Carol Oates is associate editor there, and I think she's fantastic.
Janet Fitch
#19. Short fiction seems more targeted - hand grenades of ideas, if you will. When they work, they hit, they explode, and you never forget them. Long fiction feels more like atmosphere: it's a lot smokier and less defined.
Paolo Bacigalupi
#20. I think I made my first short fiction sale in 2005. I had been writing unsuccessfully before that.
Ann Leckie
#21. I was really into writing short fiction and also photography when I was a kid.
Sean Durkin
#22. Obviously not a Stephen King level writer, but I'd written short stories and short fiction, from the time I was 12.
Mick Garris
#23. When I was starting out, I did not do short fiction well, because I kept wanting to write books.
Elizabeth Moon
#24. I love contemporary North American fiction and short fiction. My favorite writer is Jonathan Franzen, and my favorite writers of short fiction are George Saunders and Alice Munro.
Emily Perkins
#25. I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.
William Gibson
#26. I read a lot of short fiction, like Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Carver and Wells Tower.
Lorde
#27. I stopped writing short fiction early on - I was never really good at it, and I never liked the results. So I stopped trying to fit the material I was working with into these tidy little short fiction packages.
Susan Choi
#28. Justin Hermann is one of the best new voices in short fiction-deep and entertaining as hell, with many funny lines, unexpected turns of events, and great insights. Wonderful stories: each one is a trip!
Josip Novakovich
#29. I don't separate writing songs from poetry and short fiction. In the area where I work in my house, there's a word processor and a guitar.
Steve Earle
#30. I'm a fan of short horror fiction ... in fact, the most memorable horror I've read is of the short variety ... but I have a hard time pulling it off myself.
George Stephen
#31. It's the first instance where I believe that it might actually be wrong, the first time I feel like a bit of a creep.
Siobhan Davis
#32. A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method.
Robert A. Heinlein
#33. I started off doing fiction in 1993. It didn't occur to me to do nonfiction because it wasn't a thing yet. So I was bumbling around, writing short stories, and then I took a nonfiction workshop, and I realized that this was what I was supposed to do.
Meghan Daum
#34. I want to do some fiction writing, I've had some pretty good luck with short stories, I'd like to do a couple of larger things.
Janis Ian
#35. If the world explore all my dark fantasy, will change for the better.
Alexandar Tomov
#36. Coming home seemed to have started the healing process. No longer vivid and garish, the memories seemed to be covered in gossemer, fading behind a curtain of time and forgiveness.
Karen Fowler
#37. You have to stop this. I don't want to lose you too. If you have to make a revolution, Make a small revolution.
Judy Budnitz
#38. Shaw Centre has restaurants on the fourth floor, where the ACS boy can pull chairs out for her. Girls love this because no one else does it for them, especially not those sotong RI boys.
Justin Ker
#39. The brightest minds in our field have been trying to find a definition of science fiction for these past seventy years. The short answer is, science fiction stories are given as possible, not necessarily here and now, but somewhere, sometime.
Larry Niven
#40. On the other hand, now that I'm not dependent on fiction for my income, I've been writing more short stories despite the fact that there's no real paying market for short horror other than Cemetery Dance.
George Stephen
#42. Life is way too short, so try to enjoy every minute of it with a sense of humor!
Christina Scalise
#43. It was one of those situations I often find myself in while traveling. Something's said by a stranger I've been randomly thrown into contact with, and I want to say, Listen. I'm with you on most of this, but before we continue, I need to know who you voted for in the last election.
David Sedaris
#44. The American girl isn't ANY girl; she's a remarkable specimen in a remarkable species.
Henry James
#45. It's not just the drive. They're right out front. Everywhere. Waiting for me. All day and night."
"Who are, dear?"
"Robots selling things. As soon as I set down the ship. Robots and visual-audio ads. They dig right into a man's brain. They follow people around until they die.
Philip K. Dick
#46. 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".
Alexandar Tomov
#47. 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.
Ng Yi-Sheng
#48. The times have changed and now the story is old, but yet it all remains the same, a victim in the cold.
Stephen Harker
#49. Fiction cannot betray the truth. Though it must try"...As said by Ernest Hemingway in "Blast"...The first short story in "Bullet".
Christopher J. Pumphrey
#50. I thought I was in love, but it was only a head cold. (Humans)
Robert Emmett
#51. I feel myself collapse inside as if the life force has been sucked out of me.
Siobhan Davis
#52. I've read science fiction my whole life. I never really dreamed that I'd be a published science fiction writer myself, but a short story I started years ago sort of demanded to be turned into a novel.
Ramez Naam
#53. She's the latest freshest fruit of our great American evolution. She's the self-made girl!
( ... )
Well, to begin with, the self-made girl's a new feature. That, however, you know. In the second place she isn't self-made at all. We all help to make her, we take such an interest in her.
Henry James
#54. You know Dahmer was a cannibal. You think he was a zombie?"
Tom smirked. "I'm no expert, but not all cannibals are zombies.
H.D. Timmons
#55. In 1970, at the age of 14, I entered a short story contest offering a grand prize of one dollar. I won. This was my first foray into writing fiction. I loved reading and thought that it shouldn't be so hard to write a story.
David Bergen
#56. You need to take some acting classes to learn to hide your huge crush on my husband better
Mary Papas
#57. Ah yes, now you're beginning to feel it. It's so satisfying to see my best efforts coming to fruition. Undoubtedly one of the most gratifying rewards of my profession. It would warm my heart - if I had one.
Jaye Frances
#58. Wouldn't it be kinder to say that a lie is a short work of fiction? 'A story' as my daughter says?
Helen McCloy
#59. It is truly bracing and instructive to contemplate the End Times - at least at safe remove, in the pages of fiction - especially as the world beyond our hearths churns and convulses unknowably, yet perhaps just short of ultimate disaster.
Paul Di Filippo
#60. Key to all fiction, long or short, is to remember that the wolfman did not want the moon.
Ron Carlson
#61. I'm following hot on her heels, smarting from her latest rebuttal, and I can't contain my temper as the flood of rejection washes over me, tossing me precariously close to the edge.
Siobhan Davis
#62. Sisyphus, I. I cling to my rock, you don't have to chain me. Stand back! I roll it up - up, up. And ... down we go. I knew that would happen. See, I'm on my feet again. See, I'm starting to roll it up again. Don't try to talk me out of it. Nothing, nothing could tear me away from this rock.
Susan Sontag
#63. If this were fiction, could even the most brilliant novelist contrive to make credible so short a period in which pride had been subdued and prejudice overcome?
P.D. James
#64. 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.
JY Yang
#66. I'm not just the sum of how I look although that seems to be a popular opinion, and it infuriates me.
Siobhan Davis
#67. Let us be vulgar and have some fun, let us invite the President.
Henry James
#68. The fact, and the intuition or logic about the fact, are severe coordinates in fiction. In the short story they must cross with hair-line precision.
Louise Bogan
#69. I was writing fiction in my 20s but in a pretty undisciplined way - late at night, maybe, after I'd peeled myself from the walls of a nightclub and crawled home along the gutters. But I slowly became more serious and more devout in my work, and I fell seriously in love with the short story form.
Kevin Barry
#70. A novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories.
Walker Percy
#71. A shrink and a patient switching places. Who is REALLY the boss?
Mary Papas
#72. There was something vaguely sad about the rock. It was as old as it looked, standing weathered and lonely amidst the stretch of sand, and its thoughts were quiet as it listened to the waves.
Chew Chia Shao Wei
#73. If you love somebody then tell them how you feel dont be scared of their reaction or rejection life is too short. you should take a chance and if things dont work out as you plan dont worry cuz life moves on and true love will be waiting for you again.
Atul Purohit
#74. Any moment now, I thought, he was going to wake up. Any moment.
O Thiam Chin
#75. Poetry vs. Prose
One difference of course
is the length of the line.
And some people suppose
that prose doesn't rhyme.
But I have a theory
that's more like a question:
If prose is lengthy fiction
is poetry short suggestion?
Daniel Klawitter
#76. I like fiction that deals with matters that are of burning importance to us in our private lives. And not all short stories are like that. In general, short stories - and maybe this is a little bit off-topic - but I think short stories have this bad association with, like, waiting rooms.
Lorin Stein
#78. Forgiving himself came easy to him. His, he'd come to realize, was a forgiving nature.
Lawrence Block
#79. 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?
Stephanie Ye
#80. I have been tossing around the idea of writing some non-fiction. Maybe a collection of short stories about my experience being a mom and how not to be perfect.
Melissa Peterman
#82. She kissed him first, and all the rest followed.
Alice Hoffman
#83. He could have a break at last, albeit a short one, one he sorely needed. And with that appealing thought he further squelched the subconscious screams, true message lost in the deceptive world of emotion and will.
Marcha A. Fox
#84. Fiction is about feeling, which is to say that short stories are about all of us.
Tom Bailey
#85. Couldn't help it, he insisted. My dad would bell me to draw a flower and it would turn into a Venus flytrap chewing on a hand.
Judy Budnitz
#86. 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
John Wyndham
#87. I bought a selection of short, romantic fiction novels, studied them, decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected.
Louise Brown
#88. Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.
Walter Kirn
#89. It's not enough to have good ideas, you need to master their implementation.
Rossi, Luca (2014-06-22). Galactic Energies: Science fiction and fantasy short stories (p. 20). . Kindle Edition.
Luca Rossi
#91. Is the biographer an artist who can and should exist on equal terms with the dramatist, fiction writer and poet? The short and robust answer is, 'Certainly not.'
Tom Paulin
#92. If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest ... she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death.
Ned Rorem
#93. I need to master the art of talking to her before I can even contemplate anything else.
Siobhan Davis
#94. She would keep playing the role of the winner as long as the audience believed her.
Mary Papas
#95. 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
#96. What we often take to be the new is simply the old under some novel form.
Henry James
#97. No." A short, crazed laugh. "Juliette. Please. Please. Don't tell me he's filled your head with romantic notions. Please don't tell me you fell for his false proclamations -
Tahereh Mafi
#98. I told you. I've been watching." She twirled, her arms outstretched. "Watching, watching, watching.
A.F. Stewart
#99. 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.
You Jin
#100. When the emergency brappers went of they did what any dedicated, well-trained and quick-minded Service personnel would do; they paniced.
From the short story What Makes Us Human.
Stephen R. Donaldson
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