Henry James Quotes

It's difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few words to use as tools. There isn't time for bad writing in a short story.

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.

I don't like stories where I'm being given pages and pages of detail.

Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.

Sometimes the saddest stories take the fewest words.

You could omit anything if you knew that the omitted part would strengthen the short story and make people feel something more than they understood

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

The novel wins by points, the short story by knockout.

So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence.

A novel is achieved with hard work, the short story with inspiration.

To write a short story, you have to be able to stay up all night.

We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them.

In March of 2001, I revisited the short story, and found that thought it did not work well as a short story, it might work much better as a longer one. The novel [The Kite Runner] came about as an expansion of that original, unpublished short story.

The novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.

I believe there's a landscape that exists underneath everything that we can see in present-day stuff. And I think that makes life kind of a detective story.

A good short story is a work of art which daunts us in proportion to its brevity.... No inspiration is too noble for it; no amountof hard work is too severe for it.

It's a principle of mine to come into the story as late as possible, and to tell it as fast as you can.

You can't learn to write that way - by writing directly for the screen. Wait until you're 30. But in the meantime write 200 short stories. You've got to learn how to write!

Short stories demand a certain awareness of one's own intentions, a certain narrowing of the focus.

Suddenly, details seemed extremely important. Details were something to grab on to, a way to insert myself into the story.

Sometimes ... the short short appears to rest on nothing more than a fragile anecdote which the writer has managed to drape with a quantity of suggestion. A single incident, a mere anecdote - these form the spine of the short short.

I started a short story but it was so dreary that even my pen threw up.

I lack the skill to hold a story line for the length required for a novel or even a short story. I have never had an idea that could withstand a hundred thousand words, or even ten thousand words of rubber meeting the road.

The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue.