50 Greatest Short Stories Quotes

“Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“short story: plot, setting, characters and theme. There is, however, a subtle difference between a plot and a story. A story is ‘life in time’; a plot is ‘life in values’. The story cannot diverge from the main plot. It leaves behind a single impression or effect. Great short-story writers have the art of excellence. These writers ‘carve on an inch of”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“such as some private hotels in Paris have on the ground floor, for fear of thieves, and he is going to make me a similar door as well. I have made myself out a coward, but I do not care about that! September 10. Rouen, Hotel Continental. It is done; it is done—but is He dead? My mind is thoroughly upset by what I have seen. Well then, yesterday, the locksmith having put on the iron shutters and door, I left everything open until midnight, although it was getting cold. Suddenly I felt that He was there, and joy, mad joy took possession of me. I got up softly,”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“we cling to our last pleasures as the tree clings to its last leaves.”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed.”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“He had gone on the Stock Exchange for six months; but what was a butterfly to do among bulls and bears?”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow.”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“A story is ‘life in time’; a plot is ‘life in values’.”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“An artist’s heart is his head,’ replied Trevor; ‘and besides, our business is to realise the world as we see it, not to reform it as we know it.”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“Men who are dandies and women who are darlings rule the world, at least they should do so.”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“India,”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“Laura Merton,”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“Magazine,”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“profession.”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“To torment and tantalize oneself with hopes of possible fortune is so sweet, so thrilling!”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“wealthy”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“New Delhi”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“Unless”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“one already dead. From this state he was awakened—ages later, it seemed to him—by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fullness—of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion.”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“bête”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“sacrilege”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“speckly-spickly shadows of the forest, while the Leopard and the Ethiopian”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I’ve known that for three days. Didn’t the doctor tell you?”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“But, as the years passed, her honey-colored hair became an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery—moreover, and, most of all, she had become too settled in her ways, too placid, too content, too anaemic in her excitements, and too sober in her taste.”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“ABC is the essence of a short story: Accuracy, Brevity, Conciseness”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“Brevity,”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“above. Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed.”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“essence”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories

“She was not thinking at all. She seemed for the time to be taking a rest from that laborious and fatiguing function and to have abandoned herself to some mechanical impulse that directed her actions and freed her of responsibility.”
― Terry O'Brien, 50 Greatest Short Stories