""I can't imagine what they're planning. But I can tell you two things. We won't like it, and it won't be legal." (Holly Short)"
— Eoin Colfer (The Artemis Fowl Files)

"A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit."
— David Sedaris

"But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires."
— James Joyce

"Writing is flying in dreams. When you remember. When you can. When it works. It's that easy."
— Neil Gaiman

"It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world."
— Ian Fleming (Goldfinger)

""I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice." "
— Andre Dubus

"I never wear flats. My shoes are so high that sometimes when I step out of them, people look around in confusion and ask, "Where'd she go?" and I have to say, "I'm down here.""
— Marian Keyes

""Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't."
"
— Erica Jong

"It's guff. It doesn't advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn't actually get you anywhere."
— Douglas Adams (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish)

"These short stories are vast structures existing mostly in the subconscious of our cultural history. They will live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That's because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs. A good short story asks a question that can't be answered in simple terms. And even if we come up with some understanding, years later, while glancing out of a window, the story still has the potential to return, to alter right there in our mind and change everything."
— Walter Mosley (The Best American Short Stories 2003)

"If a nuclear disaster occurred, and you had to live out those final painful days just stretched out somewhere thinking about your life--This is who I am. This is what I love. This is what I believe--who would you want hearing your whispers? Or perhaps better: Who do you trust to hear your whispers? Whose breath do you want mingled with your own? Whose flesh still warm beside you?"
— Jill Mccorkle

"For a writer, life is always too short to write. I will just try my best during what remains of my life."
— Cao Yu

"Summer's lease hath all too short a date."
— William Shakespeare

""His lips are parenthesis enclosing compliments.""
— Bobby Ann Mason

"Neither the cat nor I missed you while you were gone. It's worse than that. We danced the visitor-gone dance, flinging our feet (and paws) with particular glee. You remember the dance - the one you do after shutting the door behind a difficult visitor (like a family member)? You hold your breath for 120 seconds then deadbolt the door, race to the bed, leap on to it and jump, twirl, bell-kick and prance, singing all the while, "she's go-onnne, she's gooo-oonne.""
— Melissa Checker

"I am in love with a pianist, without his piano what is he?"
— Jai Claire

"Of course I know that the twins are only words on a page, and I'm certainly not the sort of writer who talks to his characters or harbours any illusions about the creative process. But at the same time, I think it's juvenile and arrogant when literary writers compulsively remind their readers that the characters aren't real. People know that already. The challenge is to make an intelligent reader suspend disbelief, to seduce them into the reality of a narrative."
— Michel Faber

"Today, Crosby! Today!!"
— number 5