#stories

Life and stories are alike in one way: They are full of hollows. The king and queen have no children: They have a child hollow. The girl has a wicked stepmother: She has a mother hollow. In a story, a baby comes along to fill the child hollow. But in life, the hollows continue empty. ↗

— Franny Billingsley

#reality #stories #life

Sitting on the train I watch the scenery speeding by, notice a cobweb in the top corner of the window, undulating with a gentle breeze I can’t feel. I lean back in my seat and take my book out of the carrier bag. Turning it over in my hand, it feels warm. It feels how I want to feel; full of knowledge, full of the future. The time I’ve spent staying in bed smoking dope I’ve been hibernating, recuperating and gaining strength. I’m weak socially, but being away from other drug users has made me resilient. It’s allowed my mind and body to heal and mend. As if the winter is over, I’ve come out stronger now. I’m on my own. I have the choice of what to do with my life. I’m going to stay clean. I’m going to be the woman I can be. ↗

— Christine Lewry

#drugs #heroin #parenting-teens #true-stories-drugs #true-story

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock. ↗

— William H. Gass

#short-stories #short-story #symbols #writing #life

It is a long journey, not just as a writer, but as a human being. Take nothing and no one for granted, be humble always, be kind especially when it's difficult and never forget the place where you came from and the people that helped you get where you are. These things will live on in you and through you, long after the words have faded. ↗

— C.K. Webb

#humility #stories #writing-life #life

A daydreamer is a writer just waiting for pen and paper. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#daydreaming #fantasies #richelle #richelle-goodrich #stories

I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#device #i #i think #kind #projecting

I can't tell you exactly how I found it. It was just a process of writing a lot of stories and reading a lot of stories that I admired and just working and working until the sentences sounded right and I was satisfied with them. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#exactly #found #how #i #just

I've seen novels that have grown out of one story in a collection. But it hasn't occurred to me to take any of those stories and build on them. They seem very finished for me, so I don't feel like going back and dredging them up. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#back #build #collection #feel #finished

Interpreter of Maladies is the title of one of the stories in the book. And the phrase itself was something I thought of before I even wrote that story. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#book #even #i #interpreter #itself

It's easy to set a story anywhere if you get a good guidebook and get some basic street names, and some descriptions, but, for me, yes, I am indebted to my travels to India for several of the stories. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#anywhere #basic #descriptions #easy #get