#short

I'm not threatening you. I'm just informing you of police procedure. If you continue to obstruct me, I remove the obstruction, in this case you, and proceed to the next command. ↗

— Eoin Colfer

#information

He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them. ↗

— Amy Hempel

#short-story #short-story

- Excuse me gentlemen, I know it is a little disturbing, because tomorrow is the end of the world, and that man is dead, but still…he hadn’t paid. Can we arrange the matter somehow? – she looks the gathered with endless anxiously and still a little angry face. ↗

— Alexandar Tomov

#short-story

For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably. ↗

— John Cheever

#prose #short-stories #intelligence

Why ruin my sister's birthday simply because the entire planet was going to hell in a hand basket? ↗

— T.C. Boyle

#short-story #with-out-a-hero #short-story

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. ↗

— Edgar Allan Poe

#writing #short-story

My heart's broken,' he thought. 'If I feel this way my heart must be broken. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#short-story

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge. ↗

— Raymond Chandler

#hard-boiled #santa-anas #short-story

With the first kiss his mouth will taste of wormwood. ↗

— Poppy Z. Brite

#short-story

An admirable line of Pablo Neruda’s, “My creatures are born of a long denial,” seems to me the best definition of writing as a kind of exorcism, casting off invading creatures by projecting them into universal existence, keeping them on the other side of the bridge… It may be exaggerating to say that all completely successful short stories, especially fantastic stories, are products of neurosis, nightmares or hallucination neutralized through objectification and translated to a medium outside the neurotic terrain. This polarization can be found in any memorable short story, as if the author, wanting to rid himself of his creature as soon and as absolutely as possible, exorcises it the only way he can: by writing it. ↗

— Julio Cortázar

#fantasy #genre #horror #story #writers