Quotes by Short Story Writers - Page 5

When trouble comes, close ranks
Jean Rhys
Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.
Guy de Maupassant
Irony is a gift of the gods, the most subtle of all the modes of speech. It is an armour and a weapon; it is a philosophy and a perpetual entertainment; it is food for the hungry of wit and drink to those thirsting for laughter...
W Somerset Maugham
It was growing late, and though one might stand on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster, one was still obliged to dress for dinner.
Georgette Heyer
If You Can Stand It, Play the Long Game . . .What I mean here is that you have to remain committed to the ultimate goal, which isn’t to win the immediate approval of the online world, or dazzle a workshop, but to improve your storytelling day by day.Finding the right balance of feedback—encouragement versus vigorous criticism—will help immeasurably.But your own commitment has to be to the process of improvement, not to the anticipated reward.If it’s any consolation, I’m still working on this final lesson.
Steve Almond
I do not like these painted faces that look all alike; and I think women are foolish to dull their expression and obscure their personality with powder, rouge, and lipstick.
W Somerset Maugham
It never occurs to her that she will not be a writer and only occasionally does it occur to her, depressingly, that she is going to grow into a woman, not a man.
Jean Stafford
A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.
W Somerset Maugham
I didn't say any of this to my sister. How I saw her being broken into mediocrity and motherhood; her body broken and then her mind - or did her mind go first, it's sort of hard to disentangle - and then for her to turn around and say Broken is Best, I didn't say how that made me furious beyond measure.
Anne Enright
The love between man and woman is a voluntary pact in which the one who falls short is only guilty of perfidy, but when a woman has become a mother her duty is greater because nature has entrusted the human species to her. If she fails then she is a coward, unworthy and infamous.
Guy de Maupassant
Life was hard on mothers; but then, they just didn't understand.
James T. Farrell
If there is a god, I think he has a sense of humour. He does not require human beings to protect him from satire.
James K. Morrow
The living and dead were thrown together, and the dead looked away first.-Description of Doomsday
Stanley Elkin
If a queen comes to America, crowds fill the station squares, and attendant British journalists rejoice, 'You see: the American Cousins are as respectful to Royalty as we are.'But the Americans have read of queens since babyhood. they want to see one queen, once, and if another came to town next week, with twice as handsome a crown, she would not draw more than two small boys and an Anglophile.Americans want to see one movie star, one giraffe, one jet plance, one murder, but only one. They run up a skyscraper or the fame of generals and evangelists and playwrights in one week and tear them all down in an hour, and the mark of excellence everywhere is 'under new management'.
Sinclair Lewis
What I see is nothing - I want what it hides - that is not nothing.
Jean Rhys
And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets.
Joseph Conrad
There is nothing so difficult to arrive at as the nature and personality of one's parents. Death, about which so much mystery is made,is perhaps no mystery at all. But the history of one's parents has to be pieced together from fragments, their motives and characters guessed at, and the truth about them remains deeply buried, like a boulder that projects one small surface above the level of smooth lawn, and when you come to dig around it, it proves to be too large ever to move, though each year's frost forces it up a little higher.
William Maxwell
Writing is mostly a case of mood management. The emotion you have is not absolute, it is temporary. It may be useful, but it is not the truth. It is not you.
Anne Enright
We have no heart at seventeen. We think we do; we think we have been cursed with a holy, bloated thing that twitches at the name we adore, but it is not a heart because though it will forfeit anything in the world-the mind, the body, the future, even the last lonely hour it has-it will not sacrifice itself.
Andrew Sean Greer
In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.
Edna O'Brien
And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.
Guy de Maupassant
Entertaining females with accounts of jug-bitten maunderings is one of my favourite pastimes.
Georgette Heyer
Now, money, for the night is coming. Money for my hair, money for my teeth, money for shoes that won't deform my feet (it's not so easy now to walk around in cheap shoes with very high heels), money for good clothes, money, money. The night is coming.
Jean Rhys
A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale.
Joseph Conrad
He felt entombed and stifled and desperately craved oxygen. He vainly raised the question: Why have you forsaken me?'Call my mother,' he yelled. He had meant to say: I'm dying. Please call a priest.The shadowy Presence, who had been in a panic, rushed over to him and, disregarding the fact that it was live, pushed the cable aside.'You're alive,' the Presence said in breathless tones. 'Mamma's here to help.'The elevator continued to descend, creating a vacuum. Barnes gasped for breath.'Breathe in, breathe out,' the Presence urged. She tapped his pulse rapidly with two fingers. 'Come on, you can do it. One, two, three. Breathe in. Mamma's here to help.' ... In his delirium he thought that indeed his mother was here to help. However, in all of Barnes's twenty-nine years of so-called living, his mother had never come so comfortingly close as this.
Joseph G. Peterson
Some people never have any luck. All at once, as though a thick veil had been whisked aside, he clearly saw the wretchedness―the bottomless, monotonous wretchedness―of his existence. The wretchedness which had been, which was, and which was yet to come. His last days indistinguishable from the first, with nothing ahead of him or behind him or around him, nothing in his heart, nothing anywhere.
Guy de Maupassant
I wish you did return my regard," he said. "More than I have ever wished anything in my life! Perhaps you may yet learn to do so: I should warn you that I don't easily despair!
Georgette Heyer
I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing
Guy de Maupassant
Is it just possible that the most vigorous and boldest idealists have been the worst enemies of human progress instead of its greatest creators? Possible that plain men with the humble trait of minding their own business will rank higher in the heavenly hierarchy than all the plumed souls who have shoved their way in among the masses and insisted on savings them?
Sinclair Lewis
Preparation for the future was necessary, and he was willing to admit that the great change would perhaps come in the upheaval of a revolution. But he argued that revolutionary propaganda was a delicate work of high conscience. It was the education of the masters of the world. It should be as careful as the education given to kings.
Joseph Conrad
There was an undoubted affinity in his mind between the two great passions of his life: revolution and good brew. The taste of one immediately brought to mind the other.
Guy de Maupassant
The last thing I want to tell you is this: in a real revolution—not a simple dynastic change or a mere reform of institutions—in a real revolution the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims: the victims of disgust, of disenchantment—often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured—that is the definition of revolutionary success. There have been in every revolution hearts broken by such successes. But enough of that. My meaning is that I don’t want you to be a victim.
Joseph Conrad
He seemed to have established in his mind an affinity between the two great passions of his life – pale ale and revolution – and assuredly he could not taste the one without dreaming of the other.
Guy de Maupassant
Them Frenchies!’ ‘Unchristian, that’s what I call ’em,’ responded Mr. Stubbs severely. ‘I fair compassionate that wench.
Georgette Heyer
He was not at the moment in very good odour at Bow Street. Such epithets as Blockhead and Blunderer had been used in connection with his last case. 'Jeremiah Stubbs, miss,’ said the Runner. ‘I am here in the execution of my dooty.
Georgette Heyer
Everyone, deep in their hears, is waiting for the end of the world to come.
Murakami Haruki
The great artists are those who impose their personal vision upon humanity.
Guy de Maupassant
To me he seemed one of those persons destined to failure of whom you wonder what purpose it can ever serve that they should have ben born.
W Somerset Maugham
As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.
Joseph Conrad
And though he had almost flunked in Greek, his thesis on 'Sixteen Ways of Paying a Church Debt' had won the ten-dollar prize in Practical Theology.
Sinclair Lewis
It was like making a blunder at a party; there was nothing to do about it, it was dreadfully mortifying, but it showed a lack of sense to ascribe too much importance to it.
W Somerset Maugham
Hiroshima is like a nakedly exposed wound inflicted on all mankind.
Kenzaburō Ōe
We naturally try to forget our personal tragedies, serious or trifling, as soon as possible (even something as petty as being scorned or disdained by a stranger on a street corner). We try not to carry these things over to tomorrow. It is not strange, therefore, that the whole human race is trying to put Hiroshima, the extreme point of human tragedy, completely out of mind.
Kenzaburō Ōe
He seemed to hasten the retreat of departing light by his very presence; the setting sun dipped sharply, as though fleeing before our nigger; a black mist emanated from him; a subtle and dismal influence; a something cold and gloomy that floated out and settled on all the faces like a mourning veil. The circle broke up. The joy of laughter died on stiffened lips.
Joseph Conrad
Narration, after all, isn’t just a literary function. It represents the human capacity to tell stories in such a manner that they yield meaning. Television replaced this concerted quest for meaning with a frantic pursuit of wonder.
Steve Almond
But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. And when it is accomplished— behold!— all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile— and the return to an eternal rest.
Joseph Conrad
O sleep! ridiculous mystery which makes faces appear so grotesque, you are the revealer of human ugliness. You uncover all shortcomings, all deformities and all defects. You turn every face touched by you into a caricature.
Guy de Maupassant
To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.
Joseph Conrad
I only wanted to suggest to you that self-sacrifice is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even lust and hunger are trifling.
W Somerset Maugham
How often in life do people make that awful sacrifice, that murder of possibilities?
Andrew Sean Greer
Believe me, it is quite unnecessary! I neither know nor care what it cost to redeem Lufra—and if you badger me on this very boring matter I shall not invite you to go with me when I try out my new team!”There was a moment’s tense silence; then Jessamy raised his eyes, no longer glowing, but uncomfortably austere. “Very well, sir,” he said quietly. “Will you tell me, if you please, what I owe you?”“No, young Stiff-rump! I will not!
Georgette Heyer
Well, you have the right to make a sacrifice of yourself, but I'll be damned if I'll let you sacrifice me!
Georgette Heyer
It has always seemed to me that if one falls in love with any gentleman one becomes instantly blind to his faults.But I am not blind to your faults, and I do not think that everything you do or say is right! Only—Is it being—not very comfortable—and cross—and not quite happy, when you aren’t there?” “That, my darling,” said his lordship,taking her ruthlessly into his arms,“is exactly what it s!” “Oh—!” Frederica gasped, as she emerged from an embrace which threatened to suffocate her. “Now I know! I am in love!
Georgette Heyer
To analyze or assess a person's failings or deficiencies,' he declared to himself, 'is useless, not because such blemishes are immovable, but because they affect the mass of beholders in diverse ways. Different minds perceive utterly variant figures in the same being.
A.E. Coppard
I had kissed her at odd times, in out of the way corners, in the manner of a mountain guide, nothing more.
Guy de Maupassant
The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn.
Guy de Maupassant
I am stupid, am I not? What more can I want? If you ask them who is brave--who is true--who is just--who is it they would trust with their lives?--they would say, Tuan Jim. And yet they can never know the real, real truth....
Joseph Conrad
Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns--nicht wahr?. . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if you ask me--how to be?
Joseph Conrad
It doesnot matter; there’s many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us ofa night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the sphereof its activities and of no earthly importance to anybody but to theastronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about its composition,weight, path--the irregularities of its conduct, the aberrations of itslight--a sort of scientific scandal-mongering.
Joseph Conrad
Betelgeuse, Achenar. Orion. Aquila. Centre the Cross and you have a steady compass. But there's no compass for my ever disoriented soul, only ever beckoning ghost lights. In the one sure direction, to the one sure end.
Keri Hulme