Quotes by Short Story Writers

this grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings....the merry dance of death and trade goes on
Joseph Conrad
I'm really not quite as frippery a fellow as you seem to think! I own that in my grasstime I committed a great many follies and extravagances, but, believe me, I've long since out-grown them! I don't think they were any worse than what nine out of ten youngsters commit, but unfortunately I achieved, through certain circumstances, a notoriety which most young men escape. I was born with a natural aptitude for the sporting pursuits you regard with so much distrust, and I inherited, at far too early an age, a fortune which not only enabled me to indulge my tastes in the most expensive manner imaginable, but which made me an object of such interest that everything I did was noted, and talked of. That's heady stuff for greenhorns, you know! There was a time when I gave the gossips plenty to talk about. But do give me credit for having seen the error of my ways!
Georgette Heyer
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.
Joseph Conrad
It was a wonderful experience. She mistrusted his very slumbers--and she seemed to think I could tell her why! Thus a poor mortal seduced by the charm of an apparition might have tried to wring from another ghost the tremendous secret of the claim the other world holds over a disembodied soul astray amongst the passions of this earth. The very ground on which I stood seemed to melt under my feet. And it was so simple too; but if the spirits evoked by our fears and our unrest have ever to vouch for each other's constancy before the forlorn magicians that we are, then I--I alone of us dwellers in the flesh--have shuddered in the hopeless chill of such a task.
Joseph Conrad
He is romantic—romantic,” he repeated. “And that is very bad—very bad. . . . Very good, too,” he added. “But is he?” I queried.‘“Gewiss,” he said, and stood still holding up the candelabrum, but without looking at me. “Evident! What is it that by inward pain makes him know himself? What is it that for you and me makes him—exist?”‘At that moment it was difficult to believe in Jim’s existence—starting from a country parsonage, blurred by crowds of men as by clouds of dust, silenced by the clashing claims of life and death in a material world—but his imperishable reality came to me with a convincing, with an irresistible force! I saw it vividly, as though in our progress through the lofty silent rooms amongst fleeting gleams of light and the sudden revelations of human figures stealing with flickering flames within unfathomable and pellucid depths, we had approached nearer to absolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself, floats elusive, obscure, half submerged, in the silent still waters of mystery. “Perhaps he is,” I admitted with a slight laugh, whose unexpectedly loud reverberation made me lower my voice directly; “but I am sure you are.” With his head dropping on his breast and the light held high he began to walk again. “Well—I exist, too,” he said.
Joseph Conrad
The sun finally died in beauty, flinging out its crimson flames, which cast their reflection on the faces of passers-by, giving them a strangely feverish look. The darkness of the trees became deeper. You could hear the Seine flowing. Sounds carried farther, and people in their beds could feel, as they did every night, the vibration of the ground as buses rolled past.
Georges Simenon
The street sprinkler went past and, as its rasping rotary broom spread water over the tarmac, half the pavement looked as if it had been painted with a dark stain. A big yellow dog had mounted a tiny white bitch who stood quite still.In the fashion of colonials the old gentleman wore a light jacket, almost white, and a straw hat.Everything held its position in space as if prepared for an apotheosis. In the sky the towers of Notre-Dame gathered about themselves a nimbus of heat, and the sparrows – minor actors almost invisible from the street – made themselves at home high up among the gargoyles. A string of barges drawn by a tug with a white and red pennant had crossed the breadth of Paris and the tug lowered its funnel, either in salute or to pass under the Pont Saint-Louis.Sunlight poured down rich and luxuriant, fluid and gilded as oil, picking out highlights on the Seine, on the pavement dampened by the sprinkler, on a dormer window, and on a tile roof on the Île Saint-Louis. A mute, overbrimming life flowed from each inanimate thing, shadows were violet as in impressionist canvases, taxis redder on the white bridge, buses greener.A faint breeze set the leaves of a chestnut tree trembling, and all down the length of the quai there rose a palpitation which drew voluptuously nearer and nearer to become a refreshing breath fluttering the engravings pinned to the booksellers’ stalls.People had come from far away, from the four corners of the earth, to live that one moment. Sightseeing cars were lined up on the parvis of Notre-Dame, and an agitated little man was talking through a megaphone.Nearer to the old gentleman, to the bookseller dressed in black, an American student contemplated the universe through the view-finder of his Leica.Paris was immense and calm, almost silent, with her sheaves of light, her expanses of shadow in just the right places, her sounds which penetrated the silence at just the right moment.The old gentleman with the light-coloured jacket had opened a portfolio filled with coloured prints and, the better to look at them, propped up the portfolio on the stone parapet.The American student wore a red checked shirt and was coatless.The bookseller on her folding chair moved her lips without looking at her customer, to whom she was speaking in a tireless stream. That was all doubtless part of the symphony. She was knitting. Red wool slipped through her fingers.The white bitch’s spine sagged beneath the weight of the big male, whose tongue was hanging out.And then when everything was in its place, when the perfection of that particular morning reached an almost frightening point, the old gentleman died without saying a word, without a cry, without a contortion while he was looking at his coloured prints, listening to the voice of the bookseller as it ran on and on, to the cheeping of the sparrows, the occasional horns of taxis.He must have died standing up, one elbow on the stone ledge, a total lack of astonishment in his blue eyes. He swayed and fell to the pavement, dragging along with him the portfolio with all its prints scattered about him.The male dog wasn’t at all frightened, never stopped. The woman let her ball of wool fall from her lap and stood up suddenly, crying out:‘Monsieur Bouvet!
Georges Simenon
She thought constantly about Paris and avidly read all the society pages in the papers. Their accounts of receptions, celebrations, the clothes worn, and all the accompanying delights enjoyed, whetted her appetite still further. Above all, however, she was fascinated by what these reports merely hinted at. The cleverly phrased allusions half-lifted a veil beyond which could be glimpsed devastatingly attractive horizons promising a whole new world of wicked pleasure. From where she lived, she looked on Paris as representing the height of all magnificent luxury as well as licentiousness...she conjured up the images of all the famous men who made the headlines and shone like brilliant comets in the darkness of her sombre sky. She pictured the madly exciting lives they must lead, moving from one den of vice to the next, indulging in never-ending and extraordinarily voluptuous orgies, and practising such complex and sophisticated sex as to defy the imagination. It seemed to her that hidden behind the façades of the houses lining the canyon-like boulevards of the city, some amazing erotic secret must lie."The uneventful life she lived had preserved her like a winter apple in an attic. Yet she was consumed from within by unspoken and obsessive desires. She wondered if she would die without ever having tasted the wicked delights which life had to offer, without ever, not even once, having plunged into the ocean of voluptuous pleasure which, to her, was Paris.
Guy de Maupassant
I love the night passionately. I love it as I love my country, or my mistress, with an instinctive, deep, and unshakeable love. I love it with all my senses: I love to see it, I love to breathe it in, I love to open my ears to its silence, I love my whole body to be caressed by its blackness. Skylarks sing in the sunshine, the blue sky, the warm air, in the fresh morning light. The owl flies by night, a dark shadow passing through the darkness; he hoots his sinister, quivering hoot, as though he delights in the intoxicating black immensity of space.
Guy de Maupassant
That drew a laugh from Jessamy, but he said, after a moment: “You had better flay me. It was my fault—all my fault!”“I was wondering how long it would be before you contrived to convince yourself that you were to blame,” said Alverstoke caustically. “I haven’t the slightest wish to know how you arrived at such an addlebrained conclusion, so don’t put yourself to the trouble of telling me!
Georgette Heyer
The poor wretch, she had given up so much and could yet smile at her trouble. He himself had never surrendered to anything in life - that was what life demanded of you - surrender. For reward it gave you love, this swarthy, skin-deep love that exacted remorseless penalties.
A.E. Coppard
I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more - the feeling that I could last forever outlast the sea the earth and all men.
Joseph Conrad
Get black on white.
Guy de Maupassant
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.
Georges Simenon
No man is as anti-feminist as a really feminine woman.
Frank O'Connor
The passing moment is all we can be sure of it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.
W Somerset Maugham
Life is not lost by dying life is lost minute by minute day by day in all the thousand small uncaring ways.
Stephen Vincent Benét
I have the happiness of the passing moment and what more can mortal ask?
George R. Gissing
The sea - the truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage hardihood endurance faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.
Joseph Conrad
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.
Joseph Conrad
The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it all the past as well as all the future.
Joseph Conrad
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous on the contrary it makes them for the most part humble tolerant and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.
W Somerset Maugham
Have the courage of your desire.
George R. Gissing
To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection fears doubts.... I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.
Joseph Conrad
Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
W Somerset Maugham
Felicity felicity ... is quaffed out of a golden cup ... the flavour is with you alone and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.
Joseph Conrad
No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.
Joseph Conrad
Life I fancy would very often be insupportable but for the luxury of self-compassion.
George R. Gissing
I am the only real truth I know.
Jean Rhys
We do not write as we want but as we can.
W Somerset Maugham
A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.
W Somerset Maugham
We do not fight for the real but for shadows we make A flag is a piece of cloth and a word is a sound But we make them something neither cloth nor a sound Tokens of love and hate black sorcery stones.
Stephen Vincent Benét
We do not write as we want but as we can.
W Somerset Maugham
O God if in the day of battle I forget Thee do not Thou forget me.
William King
Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.
George R. Gissing
(Abraham Lincoln's) weathered face was homely as a plowed field.
Stephen Vincent Benét
When something has been perfect there is a tendency to try hard to repeat it.
Edna O'Brien
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
W Somerset Maugham
How does one kill fear? ... How do you shoot a specter through the heart slash off its spectral head take it by its spectral throat?
Joseph Conrad
To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.
Joseph Conrad
Learn to drink the cup of life as it comes.
Agnes Turnbull
There is something haunting in the light of the moon it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul and something of its inconceivable mystery.
Joseph Conrad
He could fiddle all the bugs off a sweet-potato vine.
Stephen Vincent Benét
A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.
W Somerset Maugham
We do not fight for the real but for shadows we make A flag is a piece of cloth and a word is a sound But we make them something neither cloth nor a sound Tokens of love and hate black sorcery stones.
Stephen Vincent Benét
We do not write as we want but as we can.
W Somerset Maugham
O God if in the day of battle I forget Thee do not Thou forget me.
William King
Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.
George R. Gissing
(Abraham Lincoln's) weathered face was homely as a plowed field.
Stephen Vincent Benét
When something has been perfect there is a tendency to try hard to repeat it.
Edna O'Brien
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
W Somerset Maugham
How does one kill fear? ... How do you shoot a specter through the heart slash off its spectral head take it by its spectral throat?
Joseph Conrad
To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.
Joseph Conrad
Learn to drink the cup of life as it comes.
Agnes Turnbull
There is something haunting in the light of the moon it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul and something of its inconceivable mystery.
Joseph Conrad
He could fiddle all the bugs off a sweet-potato vine.
Stephen Vincent Benét
I take it that what all men are really after is some form of perhaps only some formula of peace.
Joseph Conrad
Money is like a sixth sense and you can't make use of the other five without it.
W Somerset Maugham
There is no word equivalent to 'cuckold' for women.
Joseph Epstein
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
W Somerset Maugham