She knew there were only small joys in life--the big ones were too complicated to be joys when you got all through--and once you realized that, it took a lot of the pressure off.
My whore of a brother has done it again." "Then, as always, orders me to clean up the mess." "I think I hate him." Poseidon to his brother, Zeus.
Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who are all happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.
First contact comes not by hand of man, but by metal of machine.
Inside a wool jacket the man had made a pocket for the treasure and from time to time he would jiggle the pocket, just to make sure that it was still there. And when on the train he rode to work he wo...
A novel is just a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.
She had a new secret, the strenght of the moon, looking at her
The usual short story cannot have a complex plot, but it often has a simple one resembling a chain with two or three links. The short short, however, doesn't as a rule have even that much - you don't...
For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.
It takes both sides to build a bridge.
You have to believe me without proof. That's what faith is — believing without proof.' They got up from the bank of stones. It was getting late, the shadows lay cool and lengthened on the grass and th...
How talented was death. How many expressions and manipulations of hand, face, body, no two alike. They stood like the naked pipes of a vast derelict calliope, their mouths cut into frantic vents. And...
It's the only light we've got in all this darkness
Let's press ahead a little further by sketching out a few variations among short shorts: ONE THRUST OF INCIDENT. (Examples: Paz, Mishima, Shalamov, Babel, W. C. Williams.) In these short shorts the ti...
Yes, the saint was underrated quite a bit, then, mostly by people who didn’t like things that were ineffable……a lot of people don’t like things that are unearthly, the things of this earth are good en...
There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the meaning of the balloon; this subsided, because we have learned not to insist on meanings, and they are rarely even looked for now, except...
His lips turned upward. Man told you to lick salt off me, but he didn’t say where you would be licking the salt from.
Isn’t it funny that if God were to reveal and explain Himself, the majority of the world would necessarily be disappointed?
I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.
The Scottish sun, shocked by having its usual cloudy underpinnings stripped away, shone feverishly, embarrassed by its nakedness.