#stories

Australian Aborigines say that the big stories — the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life — are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush. ↗

— Robert Moss

#life

She was so plain. Would it kill you to wear skirts more, he had said to her. Would it really hurt you? He was thinking of how he would like to see her when she was alone with him. He knew she could dress when she had to, but this was what he was saying. He was saying something about their private life. He was saying something about his needs as a man. He imagines America’s anger at this. It would be the women, mainly. Their eager faces had watched: Amelia boarding the plane for her first transatlantic flight; Amelia waving to the crowd in the ticker tape parade; Amelia leaving luncheons and concert halls. Some had been housewives and some, girls with dreams of loops and spins and dives, of hugging the curvature of the earth through a thin sheet of aluminum. -- After Amelia ↗

— Meg Sefton

#fictional-character #short-stories #anger

That night I slept like a baby. When I woke the next morning I knew I was going to smoke heroin again. Everything that day was enjoyable: sitting on the bus, working all day – it all felt good. It was the best day of my life. ↗

— Christine Lewry

#memoir #true-stories #true-stories-drugs #life

True love stories never have endings. ↗

— Richard Bach

#love #love stories #never #stories #true

Toy is talking and this is why I love her. She can go on about herself ceaselessly and like the scratching of a branch against the window at night, the steady insistence of it is comforting. She has stories without beginnings, stories that trail off, stories that crisscross and contradict and dead end. Toy is the star of her stories. Events orbit her like a constellation. ↗

— Erica Lorraine Scheidt

#stories #storytelling #love

...have you ever thought you knew someone--I mean really knew someone--then realized that the person you thought you knew only existed in your overextended mind... ↗

— Stephanie Verni

#age

I imagine that she flushes, seeing him there, for she is at that age when even the most commonplace boys take on a sense of mystery. And this boy is not ordinary. He is wild and he has strange and fanciful perceptions. [p. 153] ↗

— Kim Edwards

#age

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage. ↗

— Jonathan Carroll

#novels #short-fiction #short-stories #writing #writing-process

I am a man, and men are animals who tell stories. This is a gift from God, who spoke our species into being, but left the end of our story untold. That mystery is troubling to us. How could it be otherwise? Without the final part, we think, how are we to make sense of all that went before: which is to say, our lives? So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born. ↗

— Clive Barker

#stories #writing #men

A poet is a blind optimist. The world is against him for many reasons. But the poet persists. He believes that he is on the right track, no matter what any of his fellow men say. In his eternal search for truth, the poet is alone. He tries to be timeless in a society built on time. ↗

— Jack Kerouac

#beat #early-stories-and-other-writings #jack-kerouac #optimist #prose-poetry