If we're lucky, writer and reader alike, we'll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we'll ponder what we've just written or read; maybe our he...
Maybe the price of forgetting that even in America, even in New York City, when a man from back home is talking, you better listen closely. (Dark City Lights)
The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world; there's precious little economic incentive to write one...
Maybe the price of forgetting that even in America, even in New York City, when a man back home is talking, you better listen closely.
She shuffled with her head bowed, her dark eyes drifting to avoid contact, and she screamed in bed at night. (Dark City Lights)
For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave any of us ou...
Sometimes I help him out and sometimes he helps me out, and sometimes he tries to push me through the wall. (Dark City Lights)
A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.
You can take the barbarian out of the tavern, but he can take the blood out of your body.
A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to writ...
She had come to understand that American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came with having too much food: a sated belly gave Americans time to worry that their child might have a rar...
For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed an...
A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.
How Are We to Live is a collection of short stories, not a novel. This in itself is a disappointment. It seems to diminish the book’s authority, making the author seem like somebody who is just hangin...
We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do -- we do it all the time.
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 th...
When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.
Short stories are often treated as the poor cousins of novels.
Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.
A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.