Short Story Writers From England

"I couldn’t believe I was letting my ex-boyfriend risk the security of my bag. Money before honeys. No. Men weren’t honeys. Scratch that. Fees before The D. Contracts before Phone Contacts. Those were all terrible and I cannot believe someone is paying me to write. I opened up Instagram to distract myself."

"Pieces of me fell into place. I was growing into what I should be. We were growing. It wasn't as if our love built me, it's that it galvanized me, making me stronger because he saw me fully, the best and worst parts."

"It was the kind of lovemaking that has you feeling more beautiful the next day; walking smugly with a sway, hips swishing, with a nimbus of power and joy around you."

"They enjoyed the glamour but not the gore, not knowing that the gore was what gave the glamour its gleam."

"Men who actually considered themselves to be the "good ones" and yet-between the Africans on one side and the women on the other-never knew where to expect the next challenge to their God-given authority and therefore fought preemptively on every front at once."

"Psy was smiling. It was warm and soft, and to Eros it looked like the perfect place to lie in and just be."

"Love is a worn-out concept anyway—and one that quickly leads to terrible decisions and, even worse, pop music.["

"Before my eyes an all-encompassing blackness spread. A hole. Were I to fall into it, there would be no escape."

"Time was constructed with love in mind. / Time and love are intertwined, they are both measures of life, they are the two clocks."

"Love is the prism through which I view the world. I truly believe it binds and propels us. This isn’t a naive denial of the darkness that we know exists in the world; rather it is a refusal to allow the devastation, the horror, or the heartache to consume us."

"Thank you for letting me love you. Thank you for loving me back. Thank you for staying, I know it was hard sometimes. I hope you now live free."

"Time and love are intertwined, they are both measures of life, they are the two clocks. And, for love to operate as it should, it is imperative that the timing should be right."

"“Where have you been?” he asked. “Walking in the woods,” she said."

"All things are known, but most things are forgotten. It takes a special magic to remember them."

"“I really didn’t mean to steal it.” Mr. Williams shook his head. He scratched at his chin nervously. “Why not? That’s what they’re there for. Tunes belong to everybody. So do stories.”"

"“Have I told you about Christ?” “Ghost-born-man-walking-on-water-telling-stories-dead-on-tree. Yes. You’ve told me about him. Show me more feathers.”"

"Nothing has happened until it happens."

"God grew out of the memories of powerful men."

"When so much is lost in the dark of time there must be a myth to glorify that lost knowledge."

"Lavondyss for you—for all of us—is what we are able to remember of ancient times…”"

"Skills used unselfishly make for cooperation."

"As soon as one promises not to do something, it becomes the one thing above all others that one most wishes to do."

"I daresay Freddy might not be a great hand at slaying dragons—but one has not the smallest need of a man who can kill dragons!"

"I don’t think I am green. It’s true I only know what I’ve read in books, but I’ve read a great many books."

"The Regency period is peculiarly Miss Heyer's own, and The Grand Sophy is one of her very best. No one is more adept at combining the amusing idiom of the time with an undated wit to make dialogue that crackles with life. No one creates characters so entirely without anachronisms yet so convincingly flesh and blood. There is nothing of the egad-forsooth style in her books, but the very essence of the swaggering, coaching, gaming set is on every page. If there is any justice in the writing world, which is sometimes questionable, Miss Heyer's public will continue to increase substantially."

"I like very few people nowadays; in fact, the number of persons whom I cordially dislike increases almost hourly."

"Doris Phipps and Lily-Annie Pollett, though they looked incredibly plain and depraved in oyster satin blouses, tight-seated, bell-bottomed trousers, red nails on dirty hands, greasy curls hanging on their shoulders, a cigarette for ever glued to their lips, were really very nice, kind girls."

"The organ pealed forth, though never except in fiction does it do this, rather blaring and bursting, or in more refined cases quavering. In every heart began to spring that exquisite hope, seldom if ever realised, that the bride will have had a fit, or eloped with someone else."

"One more long happy Sunday had joined the pale golden Sundays that are gone. Better — to us at any rate — than Sundays now. Though these latter-day Sundays may be real enough, to us they are but the illusion and the bygone days the reality. There is always in our minds the hope that we may find again those golden unhastening days and wake up and dream."

"Laura looked up at the shelf of her novels, with Adrian Coates's name on their backs. She had been lucky, she thought, to fail into the hands of so agreeable and helpful a publisher. ... So in time her first story went to Adrian, who recognising in it a touch of good badness almost amounting to genius, gave her a contract for two more."

"“I hope all your mixtures are not as expensive,” said Alan apprehensively. “Oh, dear, no,” said the old man. “It would be no good charging you that sort of price for a love potion, for example. Young people who need a love potion very seldom have five thousand dollars. Otherwise they would not need a love potion.”"

"“Humphrey, dear,” she said, “we hear you’ve become famous. Is it true?” “It's true if you've heard it,” he replied. “That's what fame is.”"

"It is a sad reflection on life that when there is only one thing to do it is always extremely unpleasant."

"Now, producers are known to be God-like creatures, and the chief point of resemblance is that they must either create new stars or have no public."

"“You lovers,” said his companion, “are surprised by nothing, except first that your mistress should fancy you, and next, that they should fancy someone else.”"

"There is no bore like a despairing lover."

"I reflected that where vanity of that sort is to be found on one side of a contract there is always hope on the other."

"“That does not take you to Hell,” said Louis, “but only to Barons Court. The mistake is pardonable.”"

"He knew that I was impressed, but I knew that he wished to impress me. This made us even, except of course that he still had the money."

"“Selfishness and greed,” said he, “have made the world what it is today.”"

"Take a friendly word of advice. You don't want to make pictures. It’s nothing but worry. Besides, you'll get mixed up with a lot of actors."

"Alice and Irwin were as simple and as happy as any young couple in a family-style motion picture. In fact, they were even happier, for people were not looking at them all the time and their joys were not restricted by the censorship code."

"Franklin Fletcher dreamed of luxury in the form of tiger-skins and beautiful women. He was prepared, at a pinch, to forgo the tiger-skins. Unfortunately the beautiful women seemed equally rare and inaccessible."

"She was complete in every particular, and all of the highest quality; she was a picture gallery, an anthology of the poets, a precipitation of all that has ever been dreamed of love: her goodly eyes like Saphyres shining bright, her forehead yvory white, her cheeks lyke apples which the sun hath rudded, her lips lyke cherryes charming men to bite, her brest lyke to a bowle of creame uncrudded, her paps lyke a lyllies budded, her snowie neck lyke to a marble towre; and all her body like a pallace fayre, ascending up, with many a stately stayre, to honours seat and chastities sweet bowre."

"“To listen,” said little Guis, “is to be drunk without spending a penny. You think you understand; you seem to fly through the air; you have to burst out laughing.”"

"“Pray, sir,” said she, “tell me only, where am I?” “Why, in Hell, to be sure,” said he, with a hearty laugh. “Oh, thank goodness!” cried she. “I thought I was in Buenos Aires.”"

"Blackwood took large risks and sometimes blundered, but at his best he delivered a greater number of magisterial shudders than more refined writers in the genre ever attempted."

"Of the quality of Mr. Blackwood's genius there can be no dispute; for no one has even approached the skill, seriousness, and minute fidelity with which he records the overtones of strangeness in ordinary things and experiences, or the preternatural insight with which he builds up detail by detail the complete sensations and perceptions leading from reality into supernormal life or vision. Without notable command of the poetic witchery of mere words, he is the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere; and can evoke what amounts almost to a story from a simple fragment of humourless psychological description. Above all others he understands how fully some sensitive minds dwell forever on the borderland of dream, and how relatively slight is the distinction betwixt those images formed from actual objects and those excited by the play of the imagination."

"Here on the table is a book of such a sort as does from time to time appear, making, one supposes, no particular pretence to fame, and yet exceedingly well done, because it is instinct with this national power, and everyone who has a shelf for the horrible in his library will welcome it and give it its place."

"Events, moreover, which brought big changes into my life had always come, I noticed, from outside, rather than as a result of definite action on my own part. A chance meeting in a hotel-bar set me reporting, a chance meeting with Mullins landed me on the Times, a chance meeting with Angus Hamilton in Piccadilly Circus led to my writing books, a chance meeting with William E. Dodge now suddenly heaved me up another rung of life into the position of private secretary to a millionaire banker. To me it has always seemed that some outside power, but an intelligent power, pulled a string each time, and up I popped into an entirely new set of circumstances. This power pushed a button, and off I shot in a direction at right angles to the one I had been moving in before. This intelligent supervision I attributed in those days to Karma. In the mind, though perhaps with less decision there, it operated too. A book, a casual sentence of some friend, an effect of scenery, of music, and an express-lift mounts rapidly from the cellar of my being to an upper story, giving a new extended view over a far, a new horizon. Much that puzzles in the obscurity of the basement outlook becomes clear and simple. The individual who announces the sudden change is unaware probably how vital a role he plays in another’s life. He is but an instrument, after all."