The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story Quotes

“Perhaps they had tried to migrate in the past but had found either their winter habitat destroyed or the path so fragmented and fraught with danger that it made more sense—to these few birds—to ignore the tuggings of the stars and seasons and instead to try to carve out new lives”
― John Freeman, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story

“the snipe were too small”
― John Freeman, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story

“They made themselves laugh. There it is, they’d say. Over and over—there it is, my friend, there it is—as if the repetition itself were an act of poise, a balance between crazy and almost crazy, knowing without going, there it is, which meant be cool, let it ride, because Oh yeah, man, you can’t change what can’t be changed, there it is, there it absolutely and positively and fucking well is. They were tough. They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.”
― John Freeman, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story

“In order to keep him from feeling guilty (because guilt is the stony heart of nine tenths of all clinically diagnosed cancers in America today, she said),”
― John Freeman, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story

“Where we are is who we are, Miss Moore always pointin out. But”
― John Freeman, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story

“Who are these people that spend that much for performing clowns and $1,000 for toy sailboats? What kinda work they do and how they live and how come we ain’t in on it?”
― John Freeman, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story