Collected Stories Quotes & Sayings

I'm only a novelist on occasion. Many of my books are made up of brief texts collected together, short stories, or else they are books that have an overall structure but are composed of various texts. — Italo Calvino

It is evident that youth is the first victim of the trend toward bureaucratization. The young men are deprived of any opportunity to shape their own fate. — Ludwig Von Mises

The beautiful dream of young love that ventures only on half-measures, that desires and dares not ask, promises and does not give.

He was homeless in the noble sense of those who, like the Vikings and pirates of beauty, have collected in their intellectual raids all that is most precious in many great cities. He was close to all the arts in the manner of a dilettante, but stronger than his love for them was his sublime disdain to serve them.

Destiny does not always need the powerful prelude of a sudden violent blow to shake a heart beyond recovery.

Memory is always a bond and every loving memory is a bond twice over. — Stefan Zweig

Berg was proud of his storytelling to the point where he collected stories about telling stories. — Nicholas Dawidoff

[Shahrazad] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred. — Richard Francis Burton

The resistance to my work, and to my way of writing, has been there from the beginning. The first things I wrote were these short short stories collected in At the Bottom of the River, and at least three of them are one sentence long. They were printed in The New Yorker, over the objections of many of the editors in the fiction department. — Jamaica Kincaid

he collected the stories like treasure. — Laini Taylor

I remember that I felt I had to avoid all these sensational photos, the hanged woman, the man who shot himself, and so forth. I collected a great deal of material, including a number of banal, irrelevant photos, and then in the course of my work I came back to the very pictures I had actually wanted to avoid, which summed up the various stories. — Gerhard Richter

Just spoken to Lionheart. Ravenpaw won't be training with us till his wound is better. He'll probably stay at Spottedleaf's den for another day or two. Dustpaw and Sandpaw are on hunting duty. So Lionheart thought you and I could train with him and Tigerclaw this morning. We'd better hurry, though," he added. "They'll be waiting! — Erin Hunter

When I was working on 'Drown' - this was way back in the mid-'90s - I had this idea that I wanted to do another collected stories. I wanted to do another book like 'Drown' that focused specifically on infidelity. — Junot Diaz

Writing is for stories to be read, books to be published, poems to be recited, plays to be acted, songs to be sung, newspapers to be shared, letters to be mailed, jokes to be told, notes to be passed, recipes to be cooked, messages to be exchanged, memos to be circulated, announcements to be posted, bills to be collected, posters to be displayed and diaries to be concealed. Writing is for ideas, action, reflection, and experience. It is not for having your ignorance exposed, your sensitivity destroyed, or your ability assessed. — Frank Smith

There's something wrong inside of me," she said. "I don't know at it is. It feels big and heavy and sometimes it makes it hard to breathe." She lifted her hands eyes. "And tears keep leaking out of my eyes. Is this what sadness feels like?" "That's what it feels like for me." I replied. "It's funny. I've heard about it in a lot of the stories I've collected, but I never knew it felt like this before." She sighed "it's so heavy......"
"I know." I replied "I know. — Charles De Lint

What sex are you?"
Doesn't matter does it? After all that's your problem."
If I keep you, what will happen?"
You'll have a difficult, different time."
Is it worth it?"
That's up to you. — Jeanette Winterson

The despicable phoniness of people who say, "Listen, I'm going to level with you here." What does that mean? It shouldn't even need to be said. It should be obvious - written in block letters on your forehead. It should be audible in your voice, visible in your eyes, like a lover who looks into your face and takes in the whole story at a glance. A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you're in the same room with him, you know it. But false straightforwardness is like a knife in the back. — Marcus Aurelius

The warden always seems to know which book to bring. When the sun is gunslinger blue, the warden brings a western. When rain slates against the towers and the world has gone hopeless with gray, it is Bible stories. When the halls ring with the cries of riot and the bars of my own cell rattle with pain, the warden drops a soft book on the floor, solace in its pages: the collected poems of Walt Whitman. And oh, my favorites, like the tastes of childhood. Every few months the warden passes me The White Dawn, and for a few precious days I traverse the open heavens on hard-packed moonlit snow and see the blue splashing arctic lights, and I fill my belly with frozen seal meat and laugh with my Inuit friends. — Rene Denfeld

I wish - I wish instead of just recommending these books, I could set them down at your doorstep. The collected stories of John Updike, the second volume of T.C. Boyle's collected stories, and Stanley Crouch's book about the rise and times of our genius saxophone player Charlie Parker. These are deep books, books that you can get lost in. — Alan Cheuse

Con-tu-ber-nal(noun). One who occupies
the same tent; a tent-fellow, comrade.
The thought of Percy Prewitt as my contubernal causes me to break out in hives.
-From the personal dictionary of
Caroline Trent — Julia Quinn

Sad to think that we won't have any new stories from John Updike, one of the last century's masters. But so many here in the two volumes of his collected stories, 186 by my count, stories to read, reread, savor over the course of a cold season. Updike's genius in the short form spills out of these many, many pages. — Alan Cheuse

Teaching does allow me to keep one foot in the youthful waters I tend to occupy in my novels, so I'm thankful for that. My students also remind me on a daily basis that the stories I collected during my district attorney days are actually interesting to people who haven't had that experience. — Alafair Burke

But what I did think would be interesting is if we created a fictitious story of our own, and then took these stories that we had collected and assigned them to characters who would be played by actors. — Jim McKay

Giving advice is like seeing an elephant in someone's path and suggesting they remove it. Heeding advice requires forcing the elephant to budge. Huge difference. — Richelle E. Goodrich

And he wondered, suddenly, what sort of divide it created between them, that he knew pieces of her that she had never shared with him - facts and stories and moments and memories to which she had no idea he was privy. He had collected them for so long, denying to himself that this acquisition was anything more than casual amusement, when in fact it was zealous, and jelaous besides; diwowning as accidental the fact that he never forgot a single remark she made, or that others made about her, and that he approved of these other people, or disdained them, according to their treatment of her. Such a lopsided intimacy existed between him and her. Inevitably, it created a chasm whose depth neither of them could know until they tried to chart it. Would this chasm prove impossible to bridge? — Meredith Duran

There is a fundamental situation in which the country has reached rock bottom, that a mother can't send her children out of the house in the morning. The country has reached rock bottom and this needs to be changed. — Benjamin Netanyahu

A good mixtape didn't just gather together a bunch of love songs, but instead created an emotional narrative specific to your affection. The stories in most of my favorite collections are collected more like songs on a mixtape than, say, collected like spare change. By which I mean they are in conversation with each other and work to become larger than their parts. — Anthony Marra

In general, presidents and congressmen have very limited power to do good for the economy and awesome power to do bad. The best good thing that politicians can do for the economy is to stop doing bad. In part, this can be achieved through reducing taxes and economic regulation, and staying out of our lives. — Walter E. Williams

I certainly miss playing piano, and I really wish I did it more - it's really a very therapeutic thing to do for me. I just need to be home for more than a few minutes to be able to play more, I guess. — Audra McDonald

(Interested in being a better writer? Go buy yourself a copy of The Collected Stories by Grace Paley.) The — Ann Patchett

A mix of revenge, sadness and anger funnels into a decision that's so simple and neat, it could fit in my pocket. I will help Kudzu destroy Aevum. Just like Magnus destroyed my mother. — Georgia Clark

The words you can't find, you borrow.
We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone.
My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.
We are not quite novels.
The analogy he is looking for is almost there.
We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.
In the end, we are collected works. — Gabrielle Zevin

The more I learn, the more I am convinced that there are no original stories. On several occasions I have "invented" an incident, and then come across it in an obscure fragment of Hebridean lore, orally collected, and privately printed, a hundred years ago. — Alan Garner

Even though sugar was very expensive, people consumed it till their teeth turned black, and if their teeth didn't turn black naturally, they blackened them artificially to show how wealthy and marvelously self-indulgent they were. — Bill Bryson

The fact is that nothing is more difficult to believe than the truth; conversely, nothing seduces like the power of lies, the greater the better. It's only natural, and you will have to find the right balance. Having said that, let me add that this particular old woman hasn't been collecting only years; she has also collected stories, and none sadder or more terrible than the one she's about to tell you. You have been at the heart of this story without knowing it until today ... — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

My life is in these books. Read these and know my heart. We are not quire novels. We are not quite short stories. In the end, we are collected works. — Gabrielle Zevin

I picked up my volume of Collected Stories and Poems by Edgar Allen Poe. I sprawled across the bed and flipped through the pages until I came to one of my favorite short stories: "The Oval Portrait. — Crystal Smith Gordon

I loved books - not only the stories they contained, but the feel of them in my hands, the silk of the pages, the words all collected in one place. — Laurelin Paige

He had been my almost. My might-have-been.
I was afraid of what I wanted most - His kiss.
Still, I collected kiss stories.
-Susie Salmon — Alice Sebold

Hire extremely independent, intelligent, and passionate people, not necessarily "experts." Maybe three or four of my employees have MBAs, and those guys aren't necessarily at the top of the food chain. — Yvon Chouinard

I'd love to do a whole series of stories and have them collected into books. — Sergio Aragones

We know we are very special," Davis writes in "Special": "Yet we keep trying to find out in what way: not this way, not that way, then what way?" (from James Wood's review of the FSG "Collected Stories of Lydia Davis") — Lydia Davis

A company's success no longer depends primarily on its ability to raise investment capital. Success depends on the ability of its people to learn together and produce new ideas. — Arie De Geus

And I should have said something. Of course, I should have said thing after thing after thing after thing. — John Green

If any writer in this country has collected as fine and passionate a group of readers as I have, they're fortunate and lucky beyond anyone's imagination. It remains a shock to me that I've had a successful writing career. Not someone like me; Lord, there were too many forces working against me, too many dark currents pushing against me, but it somehow worked. Though I wish I'd written a lot more, been bolder with my talent, more forgiving of my weaknesses, I've managed to draw a magic audience into my circle. They come to my signings to tell me stories, their stories. The ones that have hurt them and made their nights long and their lives harder. — Pat Conroy

By liberating women from household work and helping to abolish professions such as domestic service, the washing machine and other household goods completely revolutionised the structure of society. — Ha-Joon Chang

The Veteran's History Project, a nationwide volunteer effort to collect oral histories from America's war veterans, provides an avenue to do just that. Now in its fifth year, the Project has collected more than 40,000 individual stories. — Spencer Bachus