“My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short stories are like guideposts to my heart…” ~Haruki Murakami
Monday Quoteday for Short Story Month
“I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.” ~Tobias Wolff
Monday Quoteday for Short Story Month
“I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story.” ~Annie Proulx
Monday Quoteday for Short Story Month
“If you look at my last songs and first short stories, there is a real connection between them.” ~Kazuo Ishiguro
Monday Quoteday for Short Story Month
“I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t, and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.” ~William Faulkner
Monday Quoteday for Short Story Month
“When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you.” ~George Saunders
Monday Quoteday for Short Story Month
“A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.” ~Edgar Allan Poe
Monday Quoteday for Short Story Month
“A short story is a shard, a sliver, a vignette. It’s a biopsy on the human condition but it doesn’t have this capacity to think autonomously for itself.” ~Will Self
Monday Quoteday for Short Story Month
“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
Monday Quoteday for Short Story Month
Because May is Short Story Month, I’m sharing three favorite quotes each week throughout the month, and all of them are about the short story. Enjoy!
“The great thing about a short story is that it doesn’t have to trawl through someone’s whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side.” ~Emma Donoghue