#tories

This town of churches and dreams; this town I thought I would lose myself in, with its backward ways and winding roads leading to nowhere; but, I found myself instead. -Magic in the Backyard (excerpt from American Honey) ↗

— Kellie Elmore

#country #finding-yourself #inspiring #journey #literature

That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#life #misfortune #stories #unhappiness #life

Stories where the author has known very little, but run a computer program that tells him how to construct a planet, and looked up specific things about rocketry and so on, really suck. ↗

— Frederik Pohl

#author #computer #computer program #construct #him

Those who know how to win are much more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories. ↗

— Polybius

#know #make #more #much #numerous

I don't have to listen to the Gospel on Sunday to know the stories of the New Testament. They inform so much of what I write that they're practically like a news scrim that goes through my brain 24/7. ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#goes #gospel #i #i write #inform

After a while it occurred to me that between the covers of each of those books lay a boundless universe waiting to be discovered while beyond those walls, in the outside world, people allowed life to pass by in afternoons of football and radio soaps, content to do little more than gaze at their navels. ↗

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

#stories #worlds #life

But then, that’s the beauty of writing stories—each one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and that shape, there’s no feeling like it. ↗

— T.C. Boyle

#creation #fiction #stories #writers #writing

and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood. ↗

— James Joyce

#irish_short_stories #love #love

We have been in the territories since 1967. In 2002, we had sometimes three or four suicide attacks every day. We came to the conclusion that it can't continue like that. ↗

— Silvan Shalom

#been #came #conclusion #continue #day

I decided to write the book I wanted to read ↗

— David A. Lottes

#coming-of-age-stories #french-in-north-america #frontier-and-pioneer-life #historical-fiction #native-americans