Short Story Quotes

“Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who are all happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.”
― Katherine Mansfield

“It is a happiness to wonder; -- it is a happiness to dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Complete Stories and Poems

“I’m mistaken….

for thinking you were someone with a heart worth breaking.”
― Jamie Weise

“While there may not be a book in every one of us, there is so often a damned good short story.”
― Jeffrey Archer

“It's unexpectedly painful to have become a pronoun.”
― Robin Black, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This

“What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss - absolute bliss - as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle into every finger and toe?...”
― Katherine Mansfield, Something Childish But Very Natural

“It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

“I wondered how it could be that people could love God and hate one another.”
― Julie Orringer, How to Breathe Underwater

“I knew a girl and she felt like art.
Sometimes colorful, sometimes dull,
Sometimes with bright, hopeful eyes,
Sometimes only black and white,
But she was always a piece of exquisite art.”
― Melanie Sargsian, Lovember: A Collection of Short Love Stories

“Short fiction seems more targeted - hand grenades of ideas, if you will. When they work, they hit, they explode, and you never forget them. Long fiction feels more like atmosphere: it's a lot smokier and less defined.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi

“From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the "River of Silence"; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora

“It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Lottery

“Beauty without the beloved is a like a sword through the heart.”
― Ida Alexa Ross Wylie

“He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“I'm either on the cusp of greatness or the edge of insanity.”
― Meb Bryant

“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

“Yield, and I'll eat your little pussy... first.”
― Setta Jay, Hidden Ecstasy

“He felt a little lost, after that experience. Lost as the girls on their knees. It was a never-ending story of young girls losing themselves, such that they were no longer humans with any souls or characters, but pretty girls with fat asses and nice tits.”
― Jess C Scott, Take-Out, Part 1

“Why ruin my sister's birthday simply because the entire planet was going to hell in a hand basket?”
― T.C. Boyle, Without a Hero: Stories

“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.”
― Lorrie Moore, Like Life

“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

“If a story is only what it seems to be about, then somehow the author has failed.”
― Edward Gorey

“They were each like a mirror for the other, reflecting the changes in themselves.”
― Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

“As though she had entered a fable, as though she were no more than words crawling along a dry page, or as though she were becoming that page itself, that surface on which her story would be written and across which there blew a hot and merciless wind, turning her body to papyrus, her skin to parchment, her soul to paper.”
― Salman Rushdie

“Humans are aware of very little, it seems to me, the artificial brainy side of life, the worries and bills and the mechanisms of jobs, the doltish psychologies we've placed over our lives like a stencil. A dog keeps his life simple and unadorned.”
― Brad Watson, Last Days of the Dog-Men: Stories

“By Jove, it's great! Walk along the streets on some spring morning. The little women, daintily tripping along, seem to blossom out like flowers. What a delightful, charming sight! The dainty perfume of violet is everywhere. The city is gay, and everybody notices the women. By Jove, how tempting they are in their light, thin dresses, which occasionally give one a glimpse of the delicate pink flesh beneath!

"One saunters along, head up, mind alert, and eyes open. I tell you it's great! You see her in the distance, while still a block away; you already know that she is going to please you at closer quarters. You can recognize her by the flower on her hat, the toss of her head, or her gait. She approaches, and you say to yourself: 'Look out, here she is!' You come closer to her and you devour her with your eyes.

"Is it a young girl running errands for some store, a young woman returning from church, or hastening to see her lover? What do you care? Her well-rounded bosom shows through the thin waist. Oh, if you could only take her in your arms and fondle and kiss her! Her glance may be timid or bold, her hair light or dark. What difference does it make? She brushes against you, and a cold shiver runs down your spine. Ah, how you wish for her all day! How many of these dear creatures have I met this way, and how wildly in love I would have been had I known them more intimately.

"Have you ever noticed that the ones we would love the most distractedly are those whom we never meet to know? Curious, isn't it? From time to time we barely catch a glimpse of some woman, the mere sight of whom thrills our senses. But it goes no further. When I think of all the adorable creatures that I have elbowed in the streets of Paris, I fairly rave. Who are they! Where are they? Where can I find them again? There is a proverb which says that happiness often passes our way; I am sure that I have often passed alongside the one who could have caught me like a linnet in the snare of her fresh beauty.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Selected Short Stories

“I'm not named after the character,' she said. 'I'm named after the entire opera.”
― Julie Orringer, How to Breathe Underwater

“Of course you know him. Everyone knows a pear-shaped man.”
― George R.R. Martin

“Apalah gunanya impian bila tidak diwujudkan?”
― Fredrik Nael, Fantasy Fiesta 2011: Antologi Cerita Fantasi Terbaik 2011

“Soy Hugo, vengo aquí semana tras semana por dos motivos: me encanta el café que sirven y adoro observarte mientras te quemas la lengua con el chocolate.”
― Victoria Vilchez, Todos tus recuerdos