88 Short Stories Quotes & Sayings

There are two races on earth. Those who need others, who are distracted, occupied and refreshed by others, who are worried, exhausted and unnerved by solitude as by the ascension of a terrible glacier or the crossing of a desert; and those, on the other hand, who are wearied, bored, embarrassed, utterly fatigued by others, while isolation calms them, and the detachment and imaginative activity of their minds bathes them in peace. — Guy De Maupassant

I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that. — Astrid Lindgren

Next item - three ladies, all English, a mother and two daughters. Each wears a helping of whipped white of egg on the top of their head; rather remarkable. The daughters are old, like the mother. The mother is old, like the daughters. All three are thin, flat-chested, tall, stiff, and tired-looking; their front teeth are worn outside, to intimidate plates and men. — Guy De Maupassant

You can ignore a giant wave and you can ignore a giant idea but you will be ignored by them too, like a dust ignored by the wind! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I believe in free will. I think we make our own decisions and carry out or own actions. And our actions have consequences. The world is what we make it. But I think sometimes we can ask God to help us and He will. — Michael Grant

For some years he had felt weighing on him the burden of loneliness which sometimes overwhelms old bachelors. He had been strong, active and cheerful, spending his days in sport, and his evenings in amusement. Now he was growing dull, and no longer took interest in anything. Exercise tired him, suppers and even dinners made him ill, while women bored him as much as they had once amused him. — Guy De Maupassant

Living in America, I became aware of many issues and went through a period of politicization. — Julie Christie

He himself was one of your noisy roisterers, for whom life holds no greater pleasures than wine and bought women. Outside these two poles of existence, he understood nothing. Braggart, brawler, contemptuous of every living person, he despised the whole world from the heights of his ignorance. — Guy De Maupassant

Did you ever sleep in a field of orange-trees in bloom? The air which one inhales deliciously is a quintessence of perfumes. This powerful and sweet smell, as savoury as a sweetmeat, seems to penetrate one, to impregnate, to intoxicate, to induce languor, to bring about a dreamy and somnolent torpor. It is like opium prepared by fairy hands and not by chemists. — Guy De Maupassant

When I entertain at home, I take time and pleasure in the small details that make all the difference. Entertaining is about giving to people and sharing with them. — Valentino Garavani

Fear and hopelessness washed over her. She was looking her own mortality in the face, and it was a horrifying thing to do. — Rose Wynters

I should add that there are undoubtedly charming Englishmen; I have often met them. But they are rarely our fellow-guests at hotels. — Guy De Maupassant

His life had gone by without adventures, without passions, almost without hopes. The facility of dreaming, planted in every man, had never blossomed in the narrow bed of his ambitions. — Guy De Maupassant

I called, my voice false-sounding and hoarse, slipping the painting into an extra pillowcase and hiding it under the bed before hurrying out of the room. — Donna Tartt

Both the two of us knew it. We watched the lie go up big and slow between us, then it burst like a spit bubble. They always burst before too long. — Stephen Kelman

O sleep! ridiculous mystery which makes faces appear so grotesque, you are the revealer of human ugliness. You uncover all shortcomings, all deformities and all defects. You turn every face touched by you into a caricature. — Guy De Maupassant

A rousing tale of techno-geek rebellion, as necessary and dangerous as file sharing, free speech, and bottled water on a plane. — Scott Westerfeld

Men killing other men really is an extraordinary phenomenon. Why does it happen? And how long has it gone on? And have the motives changed? — John Keegan

There's the ambiguity of human relationships, for instance. A relationship between two people, just like a sequence of words, is ambiguous if it is open to different interpretations. And if two people do have differing views about their relationship - I don't just mean about its state, I mean about its very nature - then that difference can affect the entire course of their lives. — Elliot Perlman