#tories

I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice. ↗

— Andre Dubus

#short-story

Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it. Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself. ↗

— Erin Morgenstern

#habits #reasons #stories #the-night-circus #truth

On the Writing Process: "When in doubt, take it out., ↗

— Barbara DaCosta

#children-s-books #mystery #picture-books #short-stories #writing-advice

What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again. ↗

— Tim O'Brien

#stories #writing #love

Now, years later, he had been commissioned to fashion pictures with sugar water and dyes, a holiday mural. He had risen into something he could do, he had been recognized, and those years spent enduring his father's impatience seemed far away. He would do it for number 98,761,580, his love whose hand he held, cold as it was, who had lain beside him in the tunnels, in the filth. What had haunted him was the thought of her lovely body wasting away. It had torn at his eyes, his throat. It had taken away his faith. He painted a band of sugar on the walls of the hotel, the mural reflecting the city back to itself - the deep green park, the holiday windows, lovers under golden angels, flowers spilling out of markets in December, a resurrected skyscraper, a choir of variegated faces singing in front of a red door of a dark church, the homeless - not swept away, not forgotten - their realities on their faces, hands, hair. It was not a Rockwell. There were a few artists, subcontractors, who kept trying to abscond with the project, to make it what it wasn't for the sake of something they likened to a good make-believe before bed. -- 'A Potter's Field ↗

— Meg Sefton

#short-stories #faith

...writing stories was always a bit like falling in love with a stranger and running off to Marrakech for a long weekend. It didn't have to be successful to be thrilling. ↗

— Ann Patchett

#short-stories #writing #love

If she would just let herself go I would be there to catch her if she fell but she wasn't ready to take that step yet." Ethan Sterling in Private Emotions ↗

— Elize Amornette

#books-romance #elize-amornette #elize-amornette-author #love-story #private-emotions-trilogy

The Gingerbread House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated with many sweet culinary delights on the outside. But on the inside there is nothing—only the bare gingerbread walls. It is not a real house—not until you decide to add a Gingerbread Room. That’s when the stories can move in. They will stay in residence for as long as you abstain from taking the first gingerbread bite. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#gingerbread #gingerbread-house #holiday #holidays #house

I love words.  I crave descriptions that overwhelm my imagination with vivid detail.  I dwell on phrases that make my heart thrum.  I cherish expressions that pierce my emotions and force the tears to spill over.   In essence, I long for a writer's soul sealed in ink on the page. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#inspirational-quotes #reading #reading-books #richelle #richelle-goodrich

We let ourselves loose on that simple blank piece of paper, and our bodies spill. The terror, the love…embodying our stories page after page. In a sense, the pen was our tongue, it is how we delineate the world. ↗

— Coco J. Ginger

#jamie-weise #journaling #love #overcoming #pages