Selected story quotes

1. I want the reader to feel something is astonishing. Not the 'what happens,' but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

2. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

3. Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

4. Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor followed his profession.

5. The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.

6. How terribly hard and almost impossible it is to tell the truth. More than anything else, the artist in us prevents us from telling aught as it really happened. We deal with the truth as the cook deals with meat and vegetables.

7. And the wind will whip your tousled hair, The sun, the rain, the sweet despair, Great tales of love and strife. And somewhere on your path to glory You will write your story of a life.

8. And all the trips you know you missed And all the lips you never kissed Cut through you like a knife. And now you see stretched out before thee Just another story of a life.

9. Legends die hard. They survive as truth rarely does.

10. He comes into the world God knows how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?

11. Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy In sceptred pall come sweeping by, Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line, Or the tale of Troy divine.

12. The older I get, the more I seek to use a plain prose style, concentrating more on story.

13. Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.

14. Life itself is a quotation.

15. Reality is not always probable, or likely. But if you're writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader's imagination will reject it.

16. Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.

17. The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within. Were these to be worthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interest and instruction, and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable unity, which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement.

18. Someone tried to save my soul in a gas station.

19. When I stand before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.

20. I don't know why I told this story. I could just as well have told another. Perhaps some other time I'll be able to tell another. Living souls, you will see how alike they are.

21. The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to end or the strength to go on.

22. A good ending is vital to a picture, the single most important element, because it is what the audience takes with them out of the theater.

23. O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in everything.

24. You do have a story inside you; it lies articulate and waiting to be written -- behind your silence and your suffering.

25. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

26. Character, to me, is the life's blood of fiction.

27. This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

28. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say - and to feel - 'Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought.'

29. I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.

30. One flew east, One flew west, One flew over the cuckoo's nest.

31. Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that are beyond their emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety; and to a point we can prevent premature exposure to such experiences. That is obvious. But what is just as obvious - and what is too often overlooked - is the fact that from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.

32. The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ('but of course that's why he was doing that, and that means that...') and it's magic and wonderful and strange.

33. Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.

34. I staggered into a Manchester bar late one night on a tour and the waitress said 'You look as if you need a Screaming Orgasm'. At the time this was the last thing on my mind...

35. 'I was born in the back seat of a Yellow Cab in a hospital loading zone and with the meter still running. I emerged needing a shave and shouted 'Time Square, and step on it!''

36. There is a popular superstition that 'realism' asserts itself in the cataloguing of a great number of material objects, in explaining mechanical processes, the methods of operating manufactories and trades, and in minutely and unsparingly describing physical sensations. But is not realism, more than it is anything else, an attitude of mind on the part of the writer toward his material, a vague indication of the sympathy and candour with which he accepts, rather than chooses, his theme?

37. Little Boy Blue...he needed the money!

38. For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not - and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul.

39. I was quite surprised to find out all the places that he knew And so I asked the townfolk if his stories were true They said- Old John was born here, he's lived here all his life He's never had a woman, let alone a wife. And very soon you'll find out as you check around That no one named Corey's ever lived in this town So I chided the old man 'bout the truth that I had heard He smiled and said- Reality is only just a word.

40. 'I still skate occasionally but last time I did, at our show in Hanford, I did a 360 front side varial over our rolled-up banner and broke every damn bone in my body. Ok, I only broke one bone. Well, I didn't break any bones, but I could have!'

41. The inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the manmade sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.

42. If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.

43. The human mind invents its Puss-in-Boots and its coaches that change into pumpkins at midnight because neither the believer nor the atheist is completely satisfied with appearances.

44. When a man fell into his anecdotage, it was a sign for him to retire.

45. Alice is much a focused rebellion, he's a fantastic cartoon character almost, if you like, and therefore he's still successful today-my kid, 11 years old, loves Alice Cooper.

46. What did he say had entered the world? - A Neevil - What's a Neevil? - No, he didn't say a Neevil, he said a weevil - Well, what's that? (ch. 10)

47. Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids. (ch. 1)

48. How Aslan provided food for them all I don't know; but somehow or other they found themselves all sitting down on the grass to a fine high tea at about eight o'clock. (ch. 17)

49. 'But of course that was the same boat that Aslan (he seems to be at the back of all the stories) pushed ashore at the right place for Asheesh to pick me up. I wish I knew that knight's name, fore he must have kept me alive and starved himself to do it' 'I suppose Aslan would say that was part of someone else's story,' said Aravis. 'I was forgetting that,' said Cor. (ch. 14)

50. [Aslan speaking,] He went to the door and they all followed him. He raised his head and roared, 'Now it is time!' then louder, 'Time!'; then so loud that is could have shaken the stars, 'TIME.' The Door flew open. (ch. 13)

51. 'But why,' (some ask), 'why, if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own?' Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality. One can see the principle at work in his characterization. Much that in a realistic work would be done by 'character delineation' is here done simply by making the character an elf, a dwarf, or a hobbit. The imagined beings have their insides on the outside; they are visible souls. And man as a whole, Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairy tale?

52. You write such pretty words, but life's no story book.

53. I feel like we've got a lot of good karma stored up here in Columbus. A few years ago we played here and got kicked out of this club because we started a riot while we were playing, a cop threw Mike over a bike, and like, I pushed a cop, so we drove off in our van, playing our song, and we come back the next day to load all our stuff, we realized left this unmarked, black bag. It's got all our contracts from the shows we played, $12,000 cash, half a bottle of wine, a bottle of vodka, and a joint. And we realize we left it on the sidewalk. We go back to get it, and of course its gone, so I feel like we've got all this good karma here because we probably made someones day. I'd like to think that a single mom picked it up..and.. sent her kids to.. the doctor or something. But uh..probably not. Probably someone just had a big fuckin' party.

54. I find it amoral if you're making a movie where the problem is solved with a guy standing in the back of pickup truck firing a machine at the bad guys. The morality of it is questionable because the repercussions of violence are incredibly far-reaching.

55. We looked! Then we saw him Step in on the mat! We looked! And we saw him! The Cat in the Hat!

56. Romance gathers round an old story like lichen on an old branch. And the story of Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard is so old now - some say a year old, some say even two. How can the children be expected to remember?

57. No love-story has ever been told twice. I never heard any tale of lovers that did not seem to me as new as the world on its first morning.

58. Always remember the last words of my grandfather, who said: 'A truck!'

59. A likely story - and probably true.

60. Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight, But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.

61. 'Who are you?' the minstrel asked. 'I am the Golux,' said the Golux, proudly, 'the only Golux in the world, and not a mere Device.'

62. Sir, I just think that's it's fucking brilliant that you somehow managed to tie Chuck Norris, Chewbacca the Wookie, and Jesus Christ together.

63. 'You are welcome, most noble Sorceress, to the land of the Munchkins. We are so grateful to you for having killed the Wicked Witch of the East, and for setting our people free from bondage.'

64. 'There were only four witches in all the Land of Oz, and two of them, those who live in the North and the South, are good witches. I know this is true, for I am one of them myself, and cannot be mistaken. Those who dwelt in the East and the West were, indeed, wicked witches; but now that you have killed one of them, there is but one Wicked Witch in all the Land of Oz - the one who lives in the West.'

65. We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

66. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

67. Somebody said to me this morning, 'To what do you attribute your longevity?' I don't know. I mean, I couldn't have planned my life out better. By all accounts I should be dead! The abuse I put my body through: the drugs, the alcohol, the lifestyle I've lived the last 30 years! Now, some rare fly will fly over me, crap on my shoulder, and I'll drop dead, you know? My life story is a real-life story.

68. And a moment later there was a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and the relative had crossed the threshold at fifty m.p.h. under her own steam.

69. 'Have you ever heard of Market Snodsbury Grammar School?'

70. 'Don't blame me, Pongo,' said Lord Ickenham, 'if Lady Constance takes her lorgnette to you. God bless my soul, though, you can't compare the lorgnettes of today with the ones I used to know as a boy. I remember walking one day on Grosvenor Square with my aunt Brenda and her pug dog Jabberwocky, and a policeman came up and said the latter ought to be wearing a muzzle. My aunt made no verbal reply. She merely whipped her lorgnette from its holder and looked at the man, who gave one choking gasp and fell back against the railings, starting eyes as if he had seen some dreadful sight. A doctor was sent for, and they managed to bring him round, but he was never the same again. He had to leave the Force, and eventually drifted into the grocery business. And that is how Sir Thomas Lipton got his start.'

71. Did one man write Shui Hu Chuan, or did it grow to its present shape, added to, rearranged, deepened and developed by many minds and many a hand, in different centuries? Who can now tell? They are dead. They lived in their day and wrote what in their day they saw and heard, but of themselves they have told nothing.

72. Story belongs to the people. They are sounder judges of it than anyone else, for their senses are unspoiled and their emotions are free.

73. Insanity - to have to construct a picture of one's life, by making inquiries of others.

74. There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.

75. He snorted and hit me in the solar plexus. I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor.

76. There are no 'classics' of crime and detection. Not one. Within its frame of reference, which is the only way it should be judged, a classic is a piece of writing which exhausts the possibilities of its form and can never be surpassed. No story or novel of mystery has done that yet. Few have come close. Which is one of the principal reasons why otherwise reasonable people continue to assault the citadel.

77. The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

78. When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story...When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

79. No, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

80. 'Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among the mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the glass there may have been a looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different - deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked like it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that: if you ever get there you will know what I mean. It was the unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried: 'I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia so much is because it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!'(ch. 15)