Short Story Writers From The United States

"The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on."

"That’s the way girls were—they always laughed. Because they were bitches."

"Funny...how we take it for granted that we know all there is to know about another person, just because we see them frequently or because of some strong emotional tie."

"I think perhaps all of us go a little crazy at times."

"Hollywood is a technological crapshoot."

"A writer is an eternal outsider, his nose pressed against whatever window on the other side of which he sees his material. Resentment sharpens his eye, hostility hones his killer instinct."

"New York is at once cosmopolitan and parochial, a compendium of sentimental certainties. It is in fact the most sentimental of the world's great cities — in its self-congratulation a kind of San Francisco of the East."

"Membership in the closed society of the motion picture industry is almost never revoked for moral failings."

"Anecdotes are factoids of questionable provenance, burnished to a high gloss, often set in gilded venues and populated with familiar names as background atmosphere, purged of ambiguity in the interest of keeping the narrative flowing smoothly."

"The narrative was too constricted; it was like a fetus strangling on its own umbilical cord."

"The insatiable appetites of instant communication have necessitated a whole new set of media ground rules, pedicated not only on the recording of fact but also on the projection of glamour and image and promise. The result of this cultural nymphomania is that we have become a nation of ten-minute celebrities. People, issues and causes hit the charts like rock groups, and with approximately as much staying power."

"I had been exposed to the motion picture industry at oblique angles ever since I arrived in Los Angeles in 1964, and some of its working arrangements seemed to me far more magical than that glamour for which the Industry was noted: there was the way in which failure escalated the possibilities of success, the way in which price bore no relation to demand. There was the way in which millions of dollars were gambled on ephemeral, unpredictable and, uncomfortably often, invalid ideas of marketability. There was the way that many, perhaps most, people in the Industry remained unconscious of their own myths and superstitions. There was the Eldorado mood of life in the capital, the way in which social and economic fortunes could shoot up or plummet down, as in a mining boom town, on no more than rumors, the hint of a rich vein, the gossip that the lode was played out."

"Beating up on screenwriters is a Hollywood blood sport; everyone in the business thinks he or she can write, if only time could be found. That writers find the time is evidence of their inferior position on the food chain. In the Industry, they are regarded as chronic malcontents, overpaid and undertalented, the Hollywood version of Hessians, measuring their worth in dollars, since ownership of their words belongs to those who hire and fire them."

"Stanley claims that the world is divided up into two kinds of people – those who look at their body waste in the toilet bowl, and those who don’t."

"It deserves to be mentioned here that one purpose of these huge fees is to establish respect; in the constitution of Hollywood, a million-dollar director has half a million dollars more respect than a $500,000 director. This is why the Eleventh Commandment of a motion picture negotiation is Thou shalt not take less than thy last deal. Everyone knows what everyone else makes (this information is passed around like popcorn at a movie), and the person who violates this Eleventh Commandment is seen not as a model of restraint and moderation but as a plain goddamn fool."

"I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge."

"There are no new facts about the Kennedys, only new attitudes, a literature that, like the automobile industry, puts new bodies on old chassis. ... Conspiracy is a small but durable seller, retooled every year or so."

"Writing is a manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe."

"What is astonishing about the social history of the Vietnam War is not how many people avoided it, but how many could not and did not."

"Keep going. If you keep writing, you’ll outpace the rejection. Storytelling is as old as humanity—every known civilization has told stories of life as they lived it, passed down legends of how we got here, and created fables or parables to illustrate morals or deliver lessons"

"I learned to trust my vision and advocate for it. I had experienced so much rejection that when I heard a “yes” I thought the process of “selling” my idea was over. In fact, that was the moment when I needed to be clearest about my intention"

"Stories are inextricable from existence which means your story has incalculable value. It is needed by someone, somewhere, and if you keep at it, at some point you will connect with that someone"

"I hope to add my voice to the African authors before me, beside me, and behind me committed to creating balanced, engaging, informative, and authentic portraits of the continent. I don't want to romanticize Africa, but I do want people to be aware that there is more to the continent than corruption, political unrest, war, disease, poverty, genocide and the rest"

"I am motivated to write because it's important to me not to be defined by someone else. If we leave the Storytelling to other people we can't get too mad if they get it wrong. I also love writing--from the inspiration involved in coming up up with a concept to the discipline of the process to stringing the actual words together. I'm so thankful for the gift of words"

"I wanted to make the point that God works things for good--even when events in life seem random and ridiculous"

"I wanted to make the connection that just because a person is born outside the continent, he/she is not "other""

"Don’t fall into the trap of feeling sorry for yourself because you haven’t yet got to the stage where you can [pursue your dream] full time"

"Look at a day job as a type of fellowship that pays you to research a certain sector or society"

"I wanted to expose the superiority complex people in the West have concerning Africa."

"I think writers have a responsibility to hold a mirror up to society. The beauty of writing is the reflection can, and should, come in various forms."

"When citizens allow leaders to get away with providing sub-par infrastructure, or none at all, without demanding more for themselves and their children, nations remain stuck in a cycle of poverty and victimhood"

"If a rocket screams across the darkness, the counterinsurgent can hunched down in his slit trench and pray that the glowing green ball with a sound like a steam locomotive will land on somebody else instead. Prayer probably won’t help, any more than it’ll stop the rain or make the mosquitoes stop biting. But nothing else will help either."

"I feel as if I’ve spent my working life throwing darts at a map and convincing myself that I’ve traveled to the places the darts hit."

"Nilsen looked up slowly. His face was as doubtful as that of a political prisoner who has just been informed that the revolution has made him president."

"Philosophers have an unfortunate habit of living a long time."

"Sometimes murkiness of motives can be mistaken for intelligence."

"Socrates grunted. “It seems the future may be more barbaric than the present, at least as far as you are concerned. Maybe those who believe the golden age is behind us are right.”"

"“Let us speak of Plato, and the picture he paints of people and their inability to rule themselves,” Ampharete began. This drew Heron’s attention from the sea. Mobs often make stupid decisions, on the basis of emotion rather than reason. Do you think Plato is wrong?” “Plato’s view that only the most wise should rule can justify any tyrant or group of tyrant who happen to be in power.”"

"Ampharete just smiled. “Might we go someplace else to converse? Much as I love this magnificent library, I do not feel completely at ease here—too many wise people walking about.” “Wisdom makes you uneasy?” Ampharete kept her smile. “When combined with prying eyes, yes.”"

"Appleton was getting to the point where he could no longer tell if he was reasoning well or imagining well."

"In July of 1995, the Copa, along with the chic restaurant Antonia's, burnt to the ground in the traditional suspicious, middle-of-the-night fire. Built in 1917 as a movie theater, it had been wearily showing Deep Throat for a decade before it was transformed in the '80's into a glossy gay cruise bar."

"What would be the point to discuss the craft of Jean Rhys, Janet Frame, Christina Stead, Malcolm Lowry, all of whose works can teach us little about technique, and whose way of touching us is simply by exploding on the lintel of our minds. It is not technique that guided them. Their craft consisted of desire. We are American writers, absorbing the American experience. We must absorb its heat, the recklessness and ruthlessness, the grotesqueries and cruelties. We must reflect the sprawl and smallness of America, its greedy optimism and dangerous sentimentality. And we must write with a pen—in Mark Twain’s phrase—warmed up in hell. We might have something then, worthy, necessary; a real literature instead of the Botox escapist lit told in the shiny prolix comedic style that has come to define us."

"Marilynne Robinson says she read Moby-Dick when she was nine. I wish I could say such a thing! I was reading horse books, dog books, the Baba Yaga stories in : my was my most treasured possession, but I didn’t read with much discrimination."

"Follow your obsessions. It feels lonely and crazy sometimes, but if you believe in them other people will too, and you will create something enduring."

"Consider the as houseguest. Is it a good idea to invite someone into your home whose occupation it is to observe everything?"

"I write what I am interested in, and hope it will find an audience. I don’t know that it would make a lot of sense to do it the other way around."

"Scholes mentioned and quoted from the “Following the Plot” essay, so the first thing I did was get my hands on a copy of The Afterlife: Essays and Criticism by Penelope Fitzgerald so I could read the essay in full. I guess mostly simply, I took Fitzgerald at her word. In that essay she says letters had arrived that dangled the possibility of an inheritance, and she decided to make the trip to Mexico to see about it. She and were quite desperate at that point, living beyond their means in London, editing a failing literary journal, with two young children and a third on the way. ... Penelope and Desmond stayed together until his death in 1976. Her first novel was written to entertain him as he declined. Despite all the problems, I think they must have loved each other deeply."

"You older types are mired in the minds you grew up with, a real handicap in a rapidly changing universe. The future is a game for the young and the hungry—I’m five months old myself, and on the cutting edge."

"“You are enjoying the present disruptions a good deal less than I. That is because I recently restructured my cerebral architecture—that skill is my raison d’être, I should explain—and have adopted an egocentric consciousness, which certainly changes one’s view of the world!” The creature laughed, a shocking sound. “I’m presently as selfish as any human; probably worse, since I am not used to this heady wine. As any infant.”"

"“Altruism can be surprisingly gratifying,” it remarked. “No wonder humans dabble with it.”"