Best Short Story Quotes & Sayings

If you are working on a short story for a small online press, don't try to write a serious, world-changing, add-this-to-the-literary-canon masterpiece. Do your best work, but keep it all in perspective. Save the stress for when it is really called for, like facing a two-week deadline to rewrite a novel for a major house. — Victoria Lynn Schmidt

I once wrote a short story called 'The Best Blues Singer in the World,' and it went like this: 'The streets that Balboa walked were his own private ocean, and Balboa was drowning.' End of story. That says it all. Nothing else to say. I've been rewriting that same story over and over again. All my plays are rewriting that same story. — August Wilson

You have a long history," he said, when Lanya indicated her story was finished.
"Ah, Harrier, were I to tell you a long story, we should be here for a sennight, perhaps more. Long stories are best saved for deep winter, when the days are short and time grows heavy." Lanya glanced at the sky. — Mercedes Lackey

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

At times like these, size really does matter, I point out, at I extend my ginormous umbrella over her in a way that stops any rain droplets from falling on her.
My Best Valentine's Day Ever, A Short Story by Zack Love — Zack Love

Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency - a chaos - , an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end life as we know it but for the fact that this very story is written, this order found, this style determined, the worst averted, and we are beneficiaries of that order by being readers. — Richard Ford

He didn't finish most of the stories he started anymore, couldn't bear to. He felt weak at the thought of reading another story about vampires having sex with other vampires. He tried to struggle through Lovecraft pastiches, but at the first painfully serious reference to the Elder Gods, he felt some important part of him going numb inside, the way a foot or a hand will go to sleep when the circulation is cut off. He feared the part of him being numbed was his soul. — Joe Hill

Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason
if the worlds are in any way blurred
the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'. — Raymond Carver

Let me tell you girls a story, short and sweet. In high school, I was a junior varsity cheerleader dating a senior who was up for football scholarships. I'd slept with him several times willingly. One night I wasn't in the mood, but he was. So he held me down and forced me. The few people I told about it - including my best friend - pointed out what would happen to him if I told. They stressed the fact that I hadn't been a virgin, that we were dating, that we'd had sex before. So I kept quiet. I never even told my mother. That boy put bruises on my body. I was crying and begging him to stop and he didn't. That's called rape, ladies. — Tammara Webber

Life is too short to be anything but real with the cast of characters God has placed in the story of your life. Love well, laugh often, and find your life in Christ. Don't hide away or be a follower. Be the wonderful unique person God made you to be, and know that your purpose will always be best when defined by your faith in him — Karen Kingsbury

I adapted an O. Henry short story called 'By Courier,' which got nominated for a Best Short Subject Oscar. — Peter Riegert

The short story seems like the best of all possible worlds. I do feel it is closer to writing poetry than to writing a novel, with its requirements of concentration and economy. — James Lasdun

Short stories are great start, but if they are true that's the best start so far in about 222 short stories I have viewed and I have already shared them in the book series Reddit Collection. — Deyth Banger

Samuel looked at Chief WalksAlong, at all the Tribal Cops, at Lester. He shifted the ball from his left hip to his right. He spun the ball in his hands, felt the leather against his fingertips, and closed his eyes.
"What the hell are you doing?" the Chief asked.
With his eyes still closed, Samuel drove to the basket, around his defenders, and pulled up for a short jumper. The ball rotated beautifully. Years later, Lester still swore that ball stopped in midair, just spun there like it was on a stick, like the ball wanted to make sure everyone noticed its beauty.
"That shot was vain," Lester said.
"That shot was the best story I ever told." Samuel said. — Sherman Alexie

I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave abominably, and with such abominable results. They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books. — Kurt Vonnegut

things started getting better when the people of West Point slum starting singing "No one is coming to save us!" It was a turning point. It meant they understood that local leaders were their best hope for surival. The people were finally in charge of their own future. The story turned from being about the failure of outsiders to the success of community resilience. And in the coming months when West Point slum's death toll fell far short of projections, citizens and local leaders could look at each other and say, "We did this ourselves! — Marc Maxmeister

Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums? — Connie Willis

Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, short story writer, playwright, editor, critic, essayist and one of the leaders of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of the macabre and mystery, Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of detective fiction and crime fiction. He is also credited with contributing to the emergent science fiction genre.Poe died at the age of 40. The cause of his death is undetermined and has been attributed to alcohol, drugs, cholera, rabies, suicide (although likely to be mistaken with his suicide attempt in the previous year), tuberculosis, heart disease, brain congestion and other agents. Source: Wikipedia — Edgar Allan Poe

So I'm delighted to open up a bit about these particular details, in honor of Valentine's Day (when every balding, chubby, and short actuary wants people - especially the babes out there - to know about his studly past"
From: "My Best Valentine's Day.Ever: a Short Story — Zack Love

In writing short stories - as in writing novels - take one
thing at a time. (For some writers, this advice I'm giving may
apply best to a first draft; for others, it may hinder the flow at
first but be useful when time for revision comes.) Treat a short
passage of description as a complete unit and make that one
small unit as perfect as you can; then turn to the next unit
a passage of dialogue, say - and make that as perfect as you can.
Move to larger units, the individual scenes that together make
up the plot, and work each scene until it sparkles. — John Gardner

Although the ending was more John Carpenter than John Updike, Carroll hadn't come across anything like it in any of the horror magazines, either, not lately. It was, for twenty-five pages, the almost completely naturalistic story of a woman being destroyed a little at a time by the steady wear of survivor's guilt. It concerned itself with tortured family relationships, shitty jobs, the struggle for money. Carroll had forgotten what it was like to come across the bread of everyday life in a short story. Most horror fiction didn't bother with anything except rare bleeding meat. ("Best New Horror") — Joe Hill

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels. — Tobias Wolff

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing. Not the 'what happens,' but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me. — Alice Munro

But the fantasy kingdom and trappings of success soon lost their luster, as I discovered that the most prestigious and remunerative of my resume's way stations was also the most tedious and unfulfilling I had ever experienced. This paradox only made me more morose about modernity. Why was I going to watch my hairline recede in front of two-thousand-line spreadsheets staring at me from cold, glowing monitors? Why was everyone in my office apparently so happy to be spending so many hours there, when the things they really cared about - people, pets, pastimes - were all relegated to a few photographs on their desks? That seemed to be the formula: spend the best years of your life in an office with photos of what you really care about. — Zack Love

A form wherein we can enjoy simultaneously what is best in both the novel and the short story form. My plan was to create a book that affords readers some of the novel's long-form pleasures but that also contains the short story's ability to capture what is so difficult about being human - the brevity of our moments, their cruel irrevocability. — Junot Diaz

Parenthood offers many lessons in patience and sacrifice. But ultimately, it is a lesson in humility. The very best thing about your life is a short stage in someone else's story. — Michael Gerson

Yes, it would nice for this fifty year period, this cradle of all vampire short stories in the English language, to include a vampire tale by Edgar Allan Poe. But the sad answer is that Poe never penned a vampire story. — Andrew Barger

EVEN THOUGH I KNEW it was going to be what she would ask me, Graciela McCaleb's request gave me pause. Terry McCaleb had died on his boat a month earlier. I had read about it in the Las Vegas Sun. It had made the papers because of the movie. FBI agent gets heart transplant and then tracks down his donor's killer. It was a story that had Hollywood written all over it and Clint Eastwood played the part, even though he had a couple decades on Terry. The film was a modest success at best, but it still gave Terry the kind of notoriety that guaranteed an obituary notice in papers across the country. I had just gotten back to my apartment near the strip one morning and picked up the Sun. Terry's death was a short story in the back of the A section. — Michael Connelly

Future historians trying to determine what it was like to be alive in fin de millennium America should read the last two decades of O. Henry and Best American short-story collections. — Gary Krist

I tend to be more of a novel writer. In fact, some of my novels started out as short stories, and I just got carried away! I think some of my best writing is in the short story form, but novels come more naturally to me. — Bruce Coville

The first thing we see about a short story is its mystery. And in the best short stories, we return at the last to see mystery again — Eudora Welty

The best way to make a long story short is to stop listening. — Evan Esar

I'm an old man, now. I've been alone since my 17th birthday. I'd wanted to marry, have a bunch of kids, and maybe be a grandpa. The big family around the Thanksgiving table, laughing and pouring wine and cracking jokes and harmlessly teasing the missus - I wanted that. I wanted to do something good with my life - something right. I didn't want what happened to Danny, my best childhood friend, to be the only mark I'd ever make in this world. But I thought it best not to fancy such hopes and dreams: a family, love. I'd been cursed by my best friend, and I thought it right not to inflict that curse on anyone who'd be foolish enough to love me. — J. Tonzelli

An admirable line of Pablo Neruda's, "My creatures are born of a long denial," seems to me the best definition of writing as a kind of exorcism, casting off invading creatures by projecting them into universal existence, keeping them on the other side of the bridge ... It may be exaggerating to say that all completely successful short stories, especially fantastic stories, are products of neurosis, nightmares or hallucination neutralized through objectification and translated to a medium outside the neurotic terrain. This polarization can be found in any memorable short story, as if the author, wanting to rid himself of his creature as soon and as absolutely as possible, exorcises it the only way he can: by writing it. — Julio Cortazar

Short Brief Story, How I started to make this which you see today?
I'm talking about the works, most people doubt about that I will become a writer. Most people said me this, you must drink a lot of teas, to become a writer (you must have a rich vocabulary and many other stuff!). But check out what Stephen King said in his book "Memoir and Craft" this
amazed me.
Most people know him as an actor or as an book writer...Maybe this can change some people opinions which didn't believe in me (in their opinions), I just show in my books a new world, YEAH I read some books in this time, I watched some films, I finished some games, some interesting stuff happened and many other things. But the best thing everything as much as possible was added in the books Series The Life Of One Kid! — Deyth Banger

Long fiction is wonderful and you can lose yourself in it as a reader and as a writer, but short stories don't allow the same kind of immersion. Often the best stories hold you back and make you witness them. This may be one of the reasons some people reject the form. That and the fact that they are harder work to read. A story will not let you get comfortable and settle in. It is like a stool that is so small that you must always be aware of sitting. — Isobelle Carmody