#short

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

HOLLY: Are you suggesting I occasionally stray from the rule book? FOALY: No. I'm suggesting you do not own a copy of the rule book, and if you do, you have certainly never opened it. ↗

— Eoin Colfer

#foaly #holly-short #paradox

The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized! ↗

— Roland Barthes

#clearly #deal #ending #entire #great

I want to be a hero, a small and good kind of hero, even though I know heroes have very short lives. ↗

— Boris Becker

#good #hero #heroes #i #kind

It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter. ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#any #bad #chronicle #day #days

The central bank needs to be able to make policy without short term political concerns. ↗

— Ben Bernanke

#bank #central #central bank #concerns #make

In individual industries where female labour pays an important role, any movement advocating better wages, shorter working hours, etc., would not be doomed from the start because of the attitude of those women workers who are not organized. ↗

— Clara Zetkin

#any #attitude #because #better #doomed

Our National Guard, as I think everybody knows, has provided about 40 percent of the boots on the ground in Iraq and in the conflict against Islamofascism. They went into that battle, being called up for their national security service, short of equipment. ↗

— Kit Bond

#against #battle #being #boots #called