Short Stories Quotes - Page 3

A New York plate that said you die. (Dark City Lights)

I'd started calling my parents but only when I knew they wouldn't be home.

The dollar bills attached to her hips fluttered to the rug of the small square stage, like the first flakes of winter in the Bronx. (Dark City Lights)

I just want to always be here. In this place. Right here, right now.

Hanging from every corner, above every window, standing on every shelf and tabletop, were dozens of handmade birdcages. Nomi had crafted them all, mostly out of old fishing twine, scraps of nets, and chicken wire. Woven in between the bars of the cages were bits of seashells, crab shells, pebbles, and driftwood she had scavenged along the beach. In a pinch she had made a few out of old clothes hangers she had scissored apart and woven together with strips of a negligee or shirt. Each one was personal, each one was unique, each one was a story

I read your diary. I KNOW.

You can take the barbarian out of the tavern, but he can take the blood out of your body.

Oh no, princess. I would never carry out anything which could harm your being. This was just something I was told to say. I'm not sure what is planned, if, you go against their wishes. But, I'm sure you're smart and won't test them.

Death, is a beautiful conclusion to these short stories, that which we have so interestingly entitled, lives.

Any moment now, I thought, he was going to wake up. Any moment.

Just forget for a minute that you have spectacles on your nose and autumn in your heart. Stop being tough at your desk and stammering with timidity in the presence of people. Imagine for one second that you raise hell in public and stammer on paper. You’re a tiger, a lion, a cat. You spend a night with a Russian woman and leave her satisfied. You’re twenty five. If rings had been fastened to the earth and sky, you’d have seized them and pulled the sky down to earth

Bentley is a good bee with a shaky sense of direction and an appetite for mayhem. Just don't call him a drone. He hates that.

Turn around.”Only two words, but they deliver such a sensual threat.I do as you ask without question. You are right behind me, breathing hard into the small of my neck, where I like to be kissed.

He didn't give a shit if Shakespeare didn't have glitter back in his day.

He cupped her face and held her still, as he looked into her brown eyes; she was all flash and no bang. She talked big, but when it came down to it, she was a simple girl.

I watch people sometimes, wonder how they can walk around with the weight of what they know.

You know, the world is all about balance. You lose something here... maybe somebody else picks it up over there.

But we will not bury our mother. We have no interest in putting her bones in soft ground, no desire for memorials and platitudes, no feelings attached to the organic detritus of her terminated existence.

It’s a case of mistaken identity. It’s one big mistake. You weren’t even in the country when it happened.”Maja in the short story 'Metro' by Steen Langstrup

Quote from “FUTURE GONE”:“…I set the house on fire. It’s dark outside. The fire tears down the darkness. I turn my back to the place and leave, not knowing where. And suddenly I understand…All dreams are dead now”.

You can't kill an idea the way they try to. You can keep it down awhile, but sooner or later it'll come out. Now what you've got to understand is that the wheel's not evil. Never mind what the scared men all tell you. no discovery is good or evil until men make it that way." -The Wheel, John Wtndham

I hate that I got dealt shitty parents! I hate how you make me feel like scum! I hate that you’re always running away from me! And I hate that I ever fucking gave you the power to destroy me!

You were just a young girl not wanting to let on that death could happen to one who hadn't even lived yet.

Dear family,I am drafting a new laundry protocol for better and more considerate usage of the washing machine

The rain still drummed on the roof, like fine needles striking the shingles. The family sat silently around the table, each one wrapped in their own thoughts.It was Matthew’s voice that broke the silence, asking, “And what happened after that?”“After that,” said Paul, “came Gettysburg.

All his senses screamed in warning, the very air reeking of forbidden magic, but duty call him forward.

I worked all day in back ofa hot van snipping off dog balls, I can cut one more pair. (Dark City Lights)

Never forget,' says Sugar Daddy, 'we are a nation built on sugar. It is our history and it is the source of our prosperity, now and in the future.'This is true. Our entire nation sits on reclaimed land made from sugar. Ours is an island that rose out of the sea, built on a hard core of toffee.

As the wind continued to howl and groan through her decaying body, she began to sing her story.

She's as old as the hills, evil as a snake, all malevolence and magic and death.

On the outside, I 'm a husband and a father to three sons. I end to keep quiet and stay to myself. That way I stay out of trouble as much as possible. Some people say I'm almost too quiet but it's like that saying goes, it's the quiet ones you have to watch out for...

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.

This was a great idea; he needed to go into tonight knowing that this was the last time he would ever be with Barry. He needed to savour it and enjoy it, to lock it tight in his memories, so that he would never forget how it felt to be with him.This would be his final goodbye.~ A Case of the Ex

This is new territory; a bridge between the conservative and conventional lit mag tradition and those colourful speculation-driven pamphlets that you find in stacks by the coffee-shop door, full of zombies and vampires and crashing space ships. This is a serious journal with a wide aesthetic.

Are you on crack? Or did I take a righteous bong hit before coming here?

This daemon loves men whose marriage beds have grown cold, so she can set them ablaze.

Flora went to the cinema every day that week. She saw the same movie each day, and wore the same dress.

I’d always hated cocktail parties. And this one was worse than most. Overdressed pseudo–people smiled plastic smiles, told one–upmanship stories with phony self–deprecation, then half–listened with painted–on sincerity to the one–upmanship rebuttals. Mannequins. Robots. Androids. Pseudo–people laboring in the vineyards of pseudo–intellectualism to gather the bitter grapes of self–aggrandizement.

Then why are you still here?” I ask. I stand up and her gun follows me. I welcome its bullets just to see if I could survive.“Masochism.”“I don’t know what that means.”“It means I like my own pain.”“That doesn’t make sense.”“I’m human. You think we ever make sense?

Even if this spring the dappled leaves should shelter our minds from the moon's pale echo we would still remember how once they were sheltered by our skulls only from the day's sun and the night's stars and never from what we feared and what we remembered

If the world explore all my dark fantasy, will change for the better”.

A shrink and a patient switching places. Who is REALLY the boss?

If we're lucky, writer and reader alike, we'll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we'll ponder what we've just written or read; maybe our hearts or intellects will have been moved off the peg just a little from where they were before. Our body temperature will have gone up, or down, by a degree. Then, breathing evenly and steadily once more, we'll collect ourselves, writers and readers alike, get up, "created of warm blood and nerves" as a Chekhov character puts it, and go on to the next thing: Life. Always life.

She looked at me like I was stupid, the same look the girls in JC used to give me when I hadn’t heard of the latest boy band, or turned up at Zouk wearing unfashionable clothes.

I am a dash man and not a miler, and it is probable that I will never write a novel. So far the novels of this war have had too much of the strength, maturity and craftsmanship critics are looking for, and too little of the glorious imperfections which teeter and fall off the best minds. The men who have been in this war deserve some sort of trembling melody rendered without embarrassment or regret. I’ll watch for that book.

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

If freedom is free and none need worry, then what blood drops for thee?

Spooky Twisties:All things Spooky, here beginThey lay and wait, in books within.They sometimes pass, in open space.Then leave and go, without a trace.Some appear on the spot.Some we know, others not.Sometimes we are afraid to say,“leave us now”, or beg to stay.At times they leave a sign beyond,A gentle breeze, or note from song.Be not afraid, to read story’s close.For in the dark, your spirit goes.

Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns.

Maybe the price of forgetting that even in America, even in New York City, when a man back home is talking, you better listen closely.

This isn't where I intended to be. Killing a person has a funny way of getting your life off-track.

Only criminals and madmen walk into Central Park after midnight...or, occasionally, an actor. (Dark City Lights)

You are in love with my husband. You need some acting lessons to learn to hide it better.

The Grim Reaper isn't grim at all; he's a life-saver. He isn't grim because he isn't anything. . . . he is nothing. And nothing is a hell of a lot better than anything. So long, boys.

The measure of a man, or a woman for that matter, is not so much how much they have done, but what they have overcome to do what they have done. My favorite poets have said:"Do not go gentle into that good night!"-Dylan Thomas"...fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance ran..."-Rudyard Kipling

Once when I asked you if you still loved your wife, you said, Love leaves the back door open. Later, you said, Love like a hospital gown opens at the back. And you slipped out.

I’ll give you one chance to run,but may your shoulder always whisper in your ear…“It’s best to watch out for men, like me.

Fuck your honour, Kaisheen. You are the smartest man I know, yet you had me travel three days during winter to have my counsel. Are you making a move on the Emperor? If you are, you’ll have my full support and the backing of the Monasteries.

What your mind sees when you close your eyes marks the entrance to an endless universe: your imagination.

Just like life, it was over much too soon. And just like life, there weren't any answers. But like that one-in-an-eight-million great New York moment, I didn't need one. (Dark City Lights)