Jenny Zhang Quotes

I'm not a 'long writer' and have never wanted to write a novel or even a novella. Poetry, like flash fiction, provides a readily accessible canvas to play with. Whether to express an emotion or share a vignette, these forms are often interchangeable.

Short stories consume you faster. They're connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality. I know how tough they are as a form, but they're also a total joy.

I love writing shorter fiction.

I love chapbooks. They're in some ways the ideal form in which to publish and read poems. You can read 19 poems in a way you can't sit down and read 60 to 70 pages of poems.

The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side.

I tend to write short, brief snippets - I lean toward the chamber music end as opposed to the symphony end of things.

Poems are perfect for something to listen to while you're walking around because they don't take very long.

I'm very attracted to poetry for all the reasons someone likes poetry. The notion of compression seems to fit my personality.

Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.

I like books whose virtue is all drawn together in a page or two. I like sentences that don't budge though armies cross them.

I don't do flash fiction.

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.

I love short stories - reading and writing them. The best short stories distill all the potency of a novel into a small but heady draught. They are perfect reading material for the bus or train or for a lunchtime break. Everything extraneous has been strained off by the author. The best short stories pack the heft of any novel, yet resonate like poetry.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.

Little books are the things to write at my age, I've decided. Avoid the big ones, go for the little ones.

Long fiction is wonderful and you can lose yourself in it as a reader and as a writer, but short stories don't allow the same kind of immersion. Often the best stories hold you back and make you witness them. This may be one of the reasons some people reject the form. That and the fact that they are harder work to read. A story will not let you get comfortable and settle in. It is like a stool that is so small that you must always be aware of sitting.

Unlike my subject will I frame my song, It shall be witty and it shan't be long.

Taking the question in general, I should say, in the case of many poets, that the most important thing for them to do ... is to write as little as possible

As usual, the note occupied less than a page and included neither salutation nor closing, Uncle Hal's opinion being that since the letter had a direction upon it, the intended recipient was obvious, the seal indicated plainly who had written it, and he did not waste his time in writing to fools.

The only things that erased my lonliness were written works

You've written three lines" "Three carefully considered lines,"Xavier objected. "Quality over quantity, remember

I shall be so brief that I have already finished.

It's better to say nothing than spend 1,000 words or an hour speech saying nothing. Get to the point.

To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.

The shorter and the plainer the better.