Bobbie Ann Mason Quotes

For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.

Like some kind of particularly tenacious vampire the short story refuses to die, and seems at this point in time to be a wonderful length for our generation.

Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form.

I write short stories when a little idea occurs to me, that I know isn't a part of a novel that will stand by itself and should be concentrated.

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.

It took me a long time to know enough about writing to really write short stories. You can't just immerse yourself, as you do in a novel, and see where everything goes. Novels are a very flexible, accommodating form. Short stories aren't.

I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect.

I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.

No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written.

A novel is a big thing. It's difficult to hold the whole story in your mind, especially when you've finished a first draft and are still giddy from the flow of creative juices.

When you write a novel, you never have to be in the service of the reader. My only concern with my books is that the world that's created be as logical and whole as possible.

When I was starting out, I did not do short fiction well, because I kept wanting to write books.

When I began to write seriously, 40 years ago now, my chosen form was the novel.

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.

I love to read. And right now I'm on my last hundred pages of 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen, and I really enjoyed it. His writing is just - he's one of those writers where you just go, 'There are people just meant to be novel writers.'

If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy.

To me there's no difference between a book of stories and a novel - they're just slightly different shapes.

I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.

The short story, it's not a step on the way to becoming a novelist.

I feel a bigger sense of fulfillment when writing a novel, and short stories are more about instant gratification.

I'm looking forward to writing more novels for young adults.

I have always loved short stories. I have been at least as influenced by the short story masters as I have been by novelists.

The short story, on the other hand, is the perfect American form.

I prefer a great novel, but many novels come with a bunch of novel-y writerliness that feels sort of macho to me, so I do end up reading lots of shorter things.

I can't stand the short story form, which, after all, is a magazine form.