#stories

For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably. ↗

— John Cheever

#prose #short-stories #intelligence

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. ↗

— Edgar Allan Poe

#writing #short-story

Short fiction seems more targeted - hand grenades of ideas, if you will. When they work, they hit, they explode, and you never forget them. Long fiction feels more like atmosphere: it's a lot smokier and less defined. ↗

— Paolo Bacigalupi

#short-fiction #short-stories #short-story #short-story

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book--that string of confused, alien ciphers--shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. ↗

— Alberto Manguel

#childhood #literature #reading #stories #words

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#death #end #enough #far #keep

That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth. ↗

— Tim O'Brien

#on-fiction #stories #truth #writing #fiction

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. ↗

— Rudyard Kipling

#form #history #never #stories #taught

People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don't have their own song. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#storytelling #storytelling

And there are really never endings, happy or otherwise. ↗

— Erin Morgenstern

#end #happy-endings #life #stories #dreams

Frodo: I can't do this, Sam. Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something. Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam? Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for. ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#holding-on #lord-of-the-rings #sam-gamgee #stories #chance