Truman Capote Quotes

I do write a lot of prose. It's not disciplined enough yet that it's actually become stories, or short stories. The idea of writing a novel seems impossible.

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

Novels have become equally important to me as films. I consider myself a storyteller and passionately engaged in both of those disciplines.

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

What greatly annoys me is sometimes you see the short story being described as a training ground for the novel. Kind of like an apprenticeship. And in lots of ways, it's a far harder form.

I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.

Writers cannot simply have a go, imagining it's easier to produce a story than a novel because fewer words are required. Have a go by all means; be intrepid, but be equipped.

I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story.

I do think that short story writing is often a matter of luck.

The short story seems like the best of all possible worlds. I do feel it is closer to writing poetry than to writing a novel, with its requirements of concentration and economy.

I come from a prose background. I come from short story background, and that led me into novels.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don't obey the rules of progression for novels. I don't think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let's say a chunk of fiction.

I am really excited by the form of short fiction.

I'm a competent novelist. I'm getting better. But I'm a really good short story writer.

The short story has been here and is here and will be here as long as we are.

Writing a novel that works is an extremely difficult thing to do. It requires a level of skill and dedication that always surprises me.

The more fiction you read and write, the more you'll find your paragraphs forming on their own.

If writing a novel is a year's exile to a foreign country, writing a short story is a weekend spent somewhere exotic. They're much more like vacations, more exciting and different, and you're off.

Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story.

I have also led you astray by talking of technique as if it were something that could be separated from the rest of the story. Technique can't operate at all, of course, except on believable material.

For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class - contemporary literature is what's most useful.

Also, they don't understand - writing is language. The use of language. The language to create image, the language to create drama. It requires a skill of learning how to use language.

To combine telling an interesting story with brilliantly written characters is the most difficult thing to do.

Unlike life, you've got more or less complete control over what's going on in your stories. That's not to say you can make characters do whatever you want them to - they usually have a life of their own if you've done your job properly.

I would recommend the short story form, which is a lot harder to write since you have to be so careful with words, until there is plenty of time to doodle through a novel.