The Story Of O Quotes & Sayings

People must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves. We are obligated by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here. — E. O. Wilson

O matter how much research you do, or invention you do, whether it's a character from a novel, a completely invented character or someone who actually existed, it's a work of faction. By the very fact you only have an hour and a half or two hours to tell a story, you're telescoping events and it is, in the end, a work of imagination. — Cate Blanchett

You oil field workers, come and listen to me I'm goin' to tell you a story about old John D. That company union made a fool out of me. That company union don't charge no dues It leaves you a-singing them Rockefeller blues. That company union made a fool out of me. Takes that good ole C.I.O., boys To keep that oil a-rollin', rollin' over the sea. Takes that good ole C.I.O., boys To keep that oil a-rollin' over the sea. — Woody Guthrie

Do not think your story [for a one-person show] is unique ... your story is the same as millions of others. But that's o.k. - you just need to find the one or two things that makes your story interesting enough to justify someone leaving their apartment and exchanging currency. — Julie Halston

By all accounts, John Frankenheimer was singularly obsessed with The Manchurian Candidate, a film that, according to Daniel O'Brien, the director regarded "as his first truly personal project, feeling that the story made an all too valid point regarding the political manipulation and conditioning of American society. — James Kaplan

Children need to see that they are part of a history and that the story of their family is a living thing. God tells it, a new story in each generation, and each must hold hands across the sea of time, joining together the ones who went before and the ones who come after. It is given from above. Little do we understand this in the beginning, but time teaches us many things we did not expect to learn. That is life. It is the same everywhere. — Michael D. O'Brien

He slowed to a walk. As he approached her he was surprised at just how pretty she was. She looked a little like Maureen O'Hara in those old pirate movies. His writer's mind kicked in and he thought, This woman could break my heart. I could crash and burn on this woman. I could lose this woman, drink heavily, write profound poems, and die in the gutter of turberculosis over this woman.
This was not an unusual reaction for Tommy. He had it often, mostly with girls who worked the drive-through windows at fast-food places. He would drive off with the smell of fries in his car and the bitter taste of unrequited love on his tongue. It was usually good for at least one short story. — Christopher Moore

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. — Tim O'Brien

If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. — Tim O'Brien

I returned to the fields of glory, where the green grass an' flowers grow,
An' the wind softly sings the story of the braves lad of long ago.

In the great glen, they lie a-sleeping, where the cool waters gently flow,
An' the grey mist is sadly weeping for the brave lads of long ago.

See the tall grass is there a-waving as their flags were so long ago;
With their heads high, were forward braving, marching onwards to meet the foe.

March no more, my soldier laddie, there is peace where there once was war.
Sleep in peace, my soldier laddie. Sleep in peace now, the battle's o'er. — Unknown

Make me laugh. Make me cry. Tell me my place in the world. Lift me out of my skin and place me in another. Show me places I have never visited and carry me to the ends of time and space. Give my demons names and help me to confront them. Demonstrate for me possibilities I've never thought of and present me with heroes who will give me courage and hope. Ease my sorrows and increase my joy. Teach me compassion. Entertain and enchant and enlighten me.
Tell me a story. — Dennis O'Neil

When you think of Grimm's fairy tales, they are deeply, deeply psychological. They're so powerful, so bloody, and really, really disturbing. Think about five-year-olds reading that stuff. Even 'Little Red Riding Hood' is a really freaky story. Grandma is gobbled up by a wolf, and the wolf is going to eat the girl. That's scary stuff. — Denis O'Hare

The truthfulness of 'The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism' is in doubt largely because of uncertainty about its authorship, and, as we have seen, a nearly identical ambiguity surrounds the Appendix. The parallel is significant. Two psychologically oriented critics, Murray Sperber and J. Brooks Bouson, have each pointed out strong resemblances between O'Brien's manipulation of Winston and Orwell's manipulation of the reader. I believe these resemblances extend to the book's handling of its two principal documents. Just as O'Brien plays upon Winston's desire for certain knowledge about Oceania's social and political structure, leading him on with the possibly spurious 'Goldstein' tract, so the story's narrator draws the truth-seeking reader into an Appendix whose truth value cannot be determined. — Richard K. Sanderson

The official line is that, after the war, women couldn't wait to leave the offices and assembly lines and government agencies. But the real story was that the economy couldn't have men coming home without women going home, not unless it wanted a lot of unemployed vets. So the problem became unemployed women. "How you gonna keep us down on the farm after we've seen the world,"' she ad-libs to the old World War I tune. 'Enter the women's magazines, and cookbook publishers, and all these advertising agencies carrying on about the scourge of germs in the toilet bowl, and scuffs on the kitchen floor, and, my favorite, house B.O. Enter chicken hash that takes two and a half hours to prepare. I can just hear them sitting around the conference tables. 'That'll keep the gals out of trouble. — Ellen Feldman

What say you, can you love the gentleman?
This night you shall behold him at our feast.
Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face,
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;
Examine every married lineament,
And see how one another lends content;
And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margent of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him only lacks a cover.
The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him, making yourself no less. — William Shakespeare

The set of '12 Years a Slave' was an extremely joyous one! We all recognized that we were making a powerful, necessary and beautiful film, and we weren't about doing it without that sense of responsibility, and we recognized that we needed each other to tell this story. We also knew we needed to hold each other up as we told the story. — Lupita Nyong'o

Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back. — Meghan O'Rourke

The real desire [of feminism] is to break away from rationalism, androcentrisim and all forms of philosophy and practices that discriminate against women. The objective is to recover the use of senses, desire, taste, pleasure, pain and the mystery of life. It is a point of view which seeks to reflet with the body, that is, with sensitivity, with sexuality and, finally, with the story of the body itself. ~ Valmar Da Silva in Reading Other-Wise p. 125 — Gerald O. West

It's been reported that some of Arnold Schwarzenegger's opponents have been circulating naked pictures of Arnold on the Internet. Yeah, in a related story, Arnold is leading the other candidates by four inches. — Conan O'Brien

There would seem to be four stages in the composition of a story. First comes the germ of the story, then a period of more or less conscious meditation, then the first draft, and finally the revision, which may be simply 'pencil work' as John O'Hara calls it - that is, minor changes in wording - or may lead to writing several drafts and what amounts to a new work. — Malcolm Cowley

Always in the short story there is this sense of outlawed figures wandering about the fringes of society ... As a result there is in the short story at its most characteristic something we do not often find in the novel
an intense awareness of human loneliness. — Frank O'Connor

Worship is Political Science 101.
In every worship service, the Christian ekklesia is renewed in her unique story and language, her unique political experience and vocation. Every worship service is a challenge to Caesar, because every Lord's Day we bow to a Man on the throne of heaven, to whom even great Caesar must bow. O'Donovan claims that all political order rests on a people's homage to authority, which is to say, on an act of worship. Every Lord's Day, the Church is reconstituted as a polity whose obedience is owed to Christ, and we are taught to name Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords. — Peter J. Leithart

Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her flawless skin had a slight sheen from her dash across the parking lot and up the stairs. Sexy, but he suspected the fantasy the sheen inspired was better than the reality. She was the job. Probably wore Kevlar to bed. End of story. Still, he did enjoy playing with her. He liked her big blue eyes, cute little nose, slim athletic body, and her earnest dedication to making the world a more law-abiding place. It made his dedication to crime much more interesting. — Janet Evanovich

All my patients are individuals with their own story to tell, their own set of problems and their own solution. Even where the symptoms of their distress are very similar, the roads that bring them to me are not. Each of them teaches me something important, just as each new patient I meet reminds me that there is always more to learn. — Suzanne O'Sullivan

You know," Daddy said, "it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything! — Flannery O'Connor

A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it. — O. Henry

So the moral of the story is that the primary ingredient for a successful nation is guns. — Cory O'Brien

But when the springtime turns to dust
(A thousand shades of blood and rust)
And everything is ash and stone
(Contagion writ in blood and bone)
Then what exists to have and hold?
(What story, then, has not been told?)
Let this be my sacred vow
(O Mother Mary hear me now):
I will not fail, I will not fall
(Though Heaven, Hell and Chaos call).
We are the children of the Risen.
This world our home, this prayer our prison. — Mira Grant

A memory came to me. One time, in middle school, a famous author came to talk to our class and give a writing workshop. One of the things she told us about writing a novel was that the story should be about what the main character wants. Dorothy wants to go home to Kansas. George Milton wants a farm of his own. Amelia Sedley wants to marry her darling George and live happily ever after. The end of the story, according to the famous author, is when the character either gests what he wants or realizes he's never going to get it. Or sometimes, she said, like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, realizes she doesn't actually want what she thought she wanted all along.
pg. 324 of Bewitching — Alex Flinn

Writing about real stuff that really concerned me brought out my craft. If you're writing a story about, 'Is Lois Lane gonna figure out that Superman is Clark Kent?' - it's really hard to get involved in that on anything other than a craft level. And I'm not gonna put down craftsmanship; it is a noble enough thing to have made a table that you can pound on and it doesn't fall down. But occasionally, we might have an assignment that engages some other parts of ourselves, and those tend to be the good stories. — Dennis O'Neil

Fall down. Make a mess. Break something occasionally. Know that your mistakes are your own unique way of getting to where you need to be. And remember that the story is never over. — Conan O'Brien

Fiction operates through the senses, and I think one reason that people find it so difficult to write stories is that they forget how much time and patience is required to convince through the senses. No reader who doesn't actually experience, who isn't made to feel, the story is going to believe anything the fiction writer merely tells him. The first and most obvious characteristic of fiction is that it deals with reality through what can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, and touched. — Flannery O'Connor

Souls of poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's Canary wine?"
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest though bold Robin Hood
Would, wit his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can
"I have heard that on a day
Mine host's sign-board flew away,
Nobody knew whither, till
An astrologer's old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story,
Said he saw you in your glory,
Underneath a new old sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac. — John Keats

Oh, you mean like Orpheo rescuing Euniphon from the Underworld?" said Roland.
Rob Anybody just stared.
"It's a myth from Ephebe," Roland went on. "It's supposed to be a love story, but it's really a metaphor for the annual return of summer. There's a lot of versions of that story."
( ... )
"A metaphor is a kind o' lie to help people understand what's true," said Billy Bigchin, but this didn't help much. — Terry Pratchett

I quote Frank O'Connor to my students: that when you are writing a story, at some point the story must take over. You are not going to be able to control it. I think this is true. O'Connor said he thought Joyce controls his stories too tightly - "Whoever heard of a Joyce story taking over?" he asked - and that there is a deadness about them. You have got to keep the story opened up, let the story take over at some point. — Peter Taylor

In most good stories it is the character's personalty that creates the action of the story. — Flannery O'Connor

In the early stages of creation of both art and science, everything in the mind is a story. — E. O. Wilson

I wondered what would be the most humiliating way possible to be turned into a vampire - a story that a vampire would be embarrassed to share with their vampire buddies over a nice glass of Type O. — Molly Harper

This is really hard to do but I'd like to change the tone now and briefly mention today's terrible tragedy in France. Twelve people were killed because a satirical newspaper made jokes that some group found offensive. All of us are accustomed to bad news from around the world. But this story hits home for anybody who mocks anyone. — Conan O'Brien

In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a war story nothing is ever absolutely true. — Tim O'Brien

Symbols are something [the writer] uses simply as a matter of course. You might say that theses are details that, while having their essential place in the literal level of the story, operate in depth as well as on the surface, increasing the story in every direction ... the truer the symbol, the deeper it leads you, the more meaning it opens up — Flannery O'Connor

And if ever you wanted to quit your impatient girl truly, and our little story had to be stored away in a room that's only sometimes remembered, that's still a room I'd want, and I'd go there now and again, like some room in an old hotel on a seafront someplace where two sinners did something they shouldn't. Do you mind what I am telling you? It is the God's honest truth. Even if I never saw you or heard from you again, you'd already have been the miracle of my life. — Joseph O'Connor

I think all the characters in 'American Horror Story,' which is why I love it, are looking for some sense of meaning, and also it's their form of happiness. — Denis O'Hare

To be memorable and to have dramatic impact, informational detail must function actively within the dynamic of a story. — Tim O'Brien

To provide background and physical description and all the rest is of course vital to fiction, but vital only insofar as such detail is in the service of a richly imagined story, rather than in the service of good botany or good philosophy or good geography. — Tim O'Brien

My story wasn't one of those cliched stories of being an ugly duckling, I had a pretty good time at school. But then I think being six foot by the age of 15 meant that I couldn't help but be noticed, and that was when my physical being felt quite painful - I could not any longer walk into a room without being noticed. — Erin O'Connor

I do have a stunt double because there are certain things that they won't let me do. Like they won't set fire to me. They won't like let me jump off a 20 story building. There are certain big stunts that it's just impossible to get insurance to let me do, but for the most part I'd say I do probably 75% of my stuff. — Alex O'Loughlin

For all the import and message of 'The Iliad,' it's ultimately a story that's meant to be heard, and the person hearing 'The Iliad' determines what it means. — Denis O'Hare

And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen. — Tim O'Brien

Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings. Her forward expression was steady and driving like the advance of a heavy truck. Her eyes never swerved to left or right but turned as the story turned as if they followed a yellow line down the center of it. She seldom used the other expression because it was not often necessary for her to retract a statement, but when she did, her face came to a complete stop, there was an almost imperceptible movement of her black eyes, during which they seemed to be receding, and then the observer would see that Mrs. Freeman, though she might stand there as real as several grain sacks thrown on top of each other, was no longer there in spirit. — Flannery O'Connor

Large-scale enthusiasm for folk music began in 1958 when the Kingston Trio recorded a song, "Tom Dooley," that sold two million records. This opened the way for less slickly commercial performers. Some, like Pete Seeger, who had been singing since the depression, were veteran performers. Others, like Joan Baez, were newcomers. It was conventional for folk songs to tell a story. Hence the idiom had always lent itself to propaganda. Seeger possessed an enormous repertoire of message songs that had gotten him blacklisted by the mass media years before. Joan Baez cared more for the message than the music, and after a few years devoted herself mainly to peace work. — William L. O'Neill

I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story. — Tim O'Brien

First contact comes not by hand of man, but by metal of machine. — Ryan Sean O'Reilly

FDR's struggle with illness and subsequent metal-filled life are remarkably similar to the story of another great leader who was part robot: Iron Man. FDR, much like Tony Stark, was cocky and arrogant before his life-changing diagnosis, but the years of suffering changed all of that, and he emerged more humble, more fearless, and ready to defend America. Also, FDR wore iron braces and used a wheelchair, which, for the purposes of this comparison, is exactly like a well-armed robot suit. — Daniel O'Brien

His heart, he said, had been the guide of his intellect." "That is just what I would fain believe. But, O Wynnie! the pity of it if that story should not be true, after all!" "Ah, my love!" I cried, "that very word makes me surer than ever that it cannot but be true. Let us go on putting it to the hardest test; let us try it until it crumbles in our hands, - try it by the touchstone of action founded on its requirements. — George MacDonald

At their core, Tiger Eyes, Forever ... , and Sally J. Freeman are all books about teenage issues, but to an adult reader, the parents' story lines seem to almost overshadow their daughters. I'm bringing an entirely new set of experiences to these novels now, and my reward is a fresh set of story lines that i missed the first time around. I'm sure that in twenty or thirty years I'll read these books again and completely identify with all the grandparent characteristics. That's the wonderful thing about Judy Blume - you can revisit her stories at any stage in life and find a character who strikes a deep chord of recognition. I've been there, I'm in the middle of this, someday that'll be me. The same characters, yet somehow completely different. (Beth Kendrick) — Jennifer O'Connell

We can embrace our whole life story in the knowledge that we have been graced and made beautiful by the providence of our past history. All the wrong turns in the past, the detours, mistakes, moral lapses, everything that is irrevocably ugly or painful, melts and dissolves in the warm glow of accepted tenderness. As theologian Kevin O'Shea writes, "One rejoices in being unfrightened to be open to the healing presence, no matter what one might be or what one might have done." - A Glimpse of Jesus — Brennan Manning

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. — Flannery O'Connor

To say that from the moment her lover had left, O began to await his return would be an understatement. She turned into pure vigil, darkness in waiting expectation of light. — Pauline Reage

But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world. — Tim O'Brien

I make the surprised O with my mouth, although I am not really that surprised. It was the kind of story that grownups tell children to complicate a thing when they could just tell you the thing itself, much faster. — Claire King

O Malalai of Maiwand, Rise once more to make Pashtuns understand the song of honor, Your poetic words turn worlds around, I beg you, rise again My father told the story of Malalai to anyone who came to our house. I loved hearing the story and the songs my father sang to me, and the way my name floated on the wind when people called it. — Malala Yousafzai

Our story opens in the mind of Luther L. (L for LeRoy) Fliegler, who is lying in his bed, not thinking of anything, but just aware of sounds, conscious of his own breathing, and sensitive to his own heartbeats. Lying beside him is his wife, lying on her right side and enjoying her sleep. — John O'Hara

I emphasize to C.E.O.s, you have to have a story in the minds of the employees. It's hard to memorize objectives, but it's easy to remember a story. — Ben Horowitz

Do you think, Daniel," she said to him, rolling over onto her back so that she was able to look out of the window while she spoke, "that we might have reached the end of our story? — Maggie O'Farrell

Dear God,
Reveal to me through stories something of what it is like to walk around in someone else's shoes.
Show me something about myself in the stories I read, something that needs changing, a thought, a feeling or attitude.
Deliver me from myself, O God, and from the parachial and sometimes prejudiced views I have of other people, other nations, other races, other religions.
Enlarge by heart with a story, and change me by the characters I meet there.
May some of the light from their lives spill over into mine, giving me illumination where there was once ignorance, compassion where there was once contempt. — Ken Gire

The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it. — Flannery O'Connor

There are three necessary elements in a story - exposition, development, and drama. Exposition we may illustrate as "John Fortescue was a solicitor in the little town of X"; development as "One day Mrs Fortescue told him she was about to leave him for another man"; and drama as "You will do nothing of the kind," he said. — Frank O'Connor

No, it was simply that I was uninterested in making, as I saw it, a Xerox of some old emotional state. I was in my mid-thirties, with a marriage more or less behind me. I was no longer vulnerable to curiosity's enormous momentum. I had nothing new to murmur to another on the subject of myself and not the smallest eagerness about being briefed on Danielle's supposedly unique trajectory - a curve described under the action, one could safely guess, of the usual material and maternal and soulful longings, a few thwarting tics of character, and luck good and bad. A life seemed like an old story. — Joseph O'Neill

Story of O is a fairy tale for another world, a world where some part of me lived for a long time, a world that no longer exists except between the covers of a book. — Anne Desclos

Courier 12 is the Type-O blood of fonts - works just as good for a 'N.Y. Times' op-ed as a screenplay or a short story. — Andrew Vachss

Nicole will come up in conversations where it's in a part of the conversation. Or we may be somewhere and I would tell some story about their mother and I. You know, we always honor her birthday. — O.J. Simpson

ANTHONY DOERR is the author of the story collections Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, the novel About Grace, and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won numerous prizes both in the United States and overseas, including four O. Henry Prizes, three Pushcart Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, the National Magazine Award for fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Story Prize. Raised in Cleveland, Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons. — Anthony Doerr

I kind of flew into a panic that somebody would have already owned the rights, because Christina Noble's life is such a good story. It took us two full years to get Christina to agree and sign the rights. — Deirdre O'Kane

Actually, there is no way of making vomiting courteous. You have to do the next best thing, which is to vomit in such a way that the story you tell about it later will be amusing. — P. J. O'Rourke

(The short story) is a form that has all the power of the novel - some would say more - but none of the self-importance. — Joseph O'Connor

O was infinitely more moving when her body was covered with marks, of whatever kind, if only because these marks made it impossible for her to cheat and immediately proclaimed, the moment they were seen, that anything went as far as she was concerned. For to know this was one thing, but to see the proof of it, and to see the proof constantly renewed, was quite another. — Pauline Reage

We will all experience the judgment of others when we fall in love. Love with your whole being anyway. — Julieanne O'Connor

Our story, Maryland's story, is the story of better choices and better results. — Martin O'Malley

One of those strange things that happens in movies is that you need someone to actually say people's names, or else you have no idea who those kids are. This was a way for her to introduce who the important boys were in the story, but then it just was so funny that it became a centerpiece to it. When you look at the character design that Tim did for Weird Girl, and what Catherine [O'Hara] did with the voice, and it's gonna kill. — John August

There is no man but carries in his breast the makings of a story, which, though never told, comes more home to him, than any the mind of another man can find and fashion in words

("The Watcher O' The Dead") — John Guinan

I hid my wound under my clothes. Nobody could see it, including myself, and I completely forgot about it. Then I met someone who, filled with love, held me tight in that point. The pain was devastating, and I hated him, o how much I hated him, the cause of all my suffering. Then I met someone, beautifully dressed, and I loved him so much, holding him tight with all my passion. And he suffered badly, and he hated me, o how much he hated me, the cause of all his pain. So the story went on till I met someone who undressed himself, standing completely naked, with all his horrible wounds. Hence I also undressed, and I saw my horrible wounds, which he could also see. Then ... — Franco Santoro

You know that you are a writer if you are imaginative. You know that you are a writer if you are curious. You know that you are a writer if you are interested in the things and people of the world. You know that you are a writer if you hold a minie ball in your hand and wonder about its story. You know that you are a writer if you like the sound of rain on the roof. And if you want to tell someone else about your heart and how waiting for the thunder sometimes makes you feel, if you work to find the words to do that, then you are a writer.
Maureen O'Toople in the short story Your Question for Author Here — Jon Scieszka

The weapon made me think of the Bible story I had been studying. "Wake up, Deborah! . . . Arise, O Barak, — Sharon Hinck

I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public. — O. Henry

The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness. — Tim O'Brien

In Eudora Welty's masterful story "Why I Live at the P.O." (1941), the narrator is engaged in a sibling rivalry with her younger sister, who has come home after leaving under suspicious if not actually disgraceful circumstances. The narrator, Sister, is outraged at having to cook two chickens to feed five people and a small child just because her "spoiled" sister has come home. What Sister can't see, but we can, is that those two fowl are really a fatted calf. It may not be a grand feast by traditional standards, but it is a feast, as called for upon the return of the Prodigal Son, even if the son turns out to be a daughter. Like the brothers in the parable, Sister is irritated and envious that the child who left, and ostensibly used up her "share" of familial goodwill, is instantly welcomed, her sins so quickly forgiven. Then — Thomas C. Foster

When I looked at the skeleton of 'Damn Yankees,' I saw an indestructible story, absolutely original characters, one of the freshest, sassiest American scores of the century, and some outmoded equipment. — Jack O'Brien

If you stand right at the edge of the night sky, some place where one o'clock leaves to meet two, the breeze will carry your words up to the stars. And they'll swallow your secrets until its time to hand them over to the truths in the sky- the ones that draw maps in the black.

They carve their answers into the backs of my hands, the grooves of the words running deep in my palms. — Marlen Komar

The Ocean's Song

We walked amongst the ruins famed in story
Of Rozel-Tower,
And saw the boundless waters stretch in glory
And heave in power.

O Ocean vast! We heard thy song with wonder,
Whilst waves marked time.
"Appear, O Truth!" thou sang'st with tone of thunder,
"And shine sublime!

"The world's enslaved and hunted down by beagles,
To despots sold.
Souls of deep thinkers, soar like mighty eagles!
The Right uphold.

"Be born! arise! o'er the earth and wild waves bounding,
Peoples and suns!
Let darkness vanish; tocsins be resounding,
And flash, ye guns!

"And you who love no pomps of fog or glamour,
Who fear no shocks,
Brave foam and lightning, hurricane and clamour,--
Exiles: the rocks! — Victor Hugo

That's what it's going to be then, brothers, as I come to the like end of this tale. You have been everywhere with your little droog Alex, suffering with him, and you have viddied some of the most grahzny bratchnies old Bog ever made, all on to your old droog Alex. And all it was was that I was young. But now as I end this story, brothers, I am not young, not no longer, oh no. Alex like groweth up, oh yes.
But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning young earth and the stars and the old Luna up there and your old droog Alex all on his oddy knocky seeking like a mate. And all that cal. A terrible grahzny vonny world, really, O my brothers. And so farewell from your little droog. And to all others in this story profound shooms of lipmusic brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that call. — Anthony Burgess

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

If the writer believes that our life is and will remain essentially mysterious, if he looks upon us as beings existing in a created order to whose laws we freely respond, then what he sees on the surface will be of interest to him only as he can go through it into an experience of mystery itself. His kind of fiction will always be pushing its own limits outward toward the limits of mystery, because for this kind of writer, the meaning of a story does not begin except at a depth where adequate motivation and adequate psychology and the various determinations have been exhausted. Such a writer will be interested in what we don't understand rather than in what we do. He will be interested in possibility rather than probability. He will be interested in characters who are forced out to meet evil and grace and who act on a trust beyond themselves - whether they know clearly what it is they act upon or not. — Flannery O'Connor

The White House admitted that Vice President Biden's endorsement of gay marriage forced him to come out in favor of it. So in a related story millions of Americans are trying to get Biden hooked on pot. — Conan O'Brien

I think there has to be an underlying sexuality. There has to be a perverseness to the clothes. There is a hidden agenda in the fragility of romance. It's like a Story of O. I am not big on women looking naive. There has to be a sinister aspect, whether it's melancholy of sadomasochist. I think everyone has a deep sexuality, and sometimes it's good to use a little of it-and sometimes a lot of it-like a masquerade. — Alexander McQueen

I have heard people say that the short story was one of the most difficult literary forms, and I've always tried to decide why people feel this way about what seems to me to be one of the most natural and fundamental ways of human expression. After all, you begin to hear and tell stories when you're a child, and there doesn't seem to be anything very complicated about it. I suspect that most of you have been telling stories all your lives, and yet here you sit - come to find out how to do it.
Then last week, after I had written down some of these serene thoughts to use here today, my calm was shattered when I was sent seven of your manuscripts to read.
After this experience, I found myself ready to admit, if not that the short story is one of the most difficult literary forms, at least that it is more difficult for some than for others. — Flannery O'Connor

Because life is robust,
Because life is bigger than equations, stronger than money, stronger than guns and poison and bad zoning policy, stronger than capitalism,
Because Mother Nature bats last, and Mother Ocean is strong, and we live inside our mothers forever, and Life is tenacious and you can never kill it, you can never buy it,
So Life is going to dive down into your dark pools, Life is going to explode the enclosures and bring back the commons,
O you dark pools of money and law and quantitudinal stupidity, you oversimple algorithms of greed, you desperate simpletons hoping for a story you can understand,
Hoping for safety, hoping for cessation of uncertainty, hoping for ownership of volatility, O you poor fearful jerks,
Life! Life! Life! Life is going to kick your ass. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Dear Bill (O'Reilly) ... I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician?
That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection! — Roger Ebert

The big story today, Barack Obama was accused of insulting Sarah Palin when he criticized Republican policies by saying, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. Political experts say that if Obama keeps insulting Palin, he could lose the election and win a job at MSNBC. — Conan O'Brien

My mother talked about the stories I used to spin as a child of three, before I started school. I would tell this story about what school I went to and what uniform I wore and who I talked to at lunchtime and what I ate, and my mother was like, 'This girl does not even go to school.' — Lupita Nyong'o