94 Short Story Quotes

Short stories have the unique ability to convey profound insights and evoke deep emotions within just a few pages. They can capture the human experience in a way that resonates with readers long after the last word is read. Our curated collection of the top 94 short story quotes showcases the brilliance of concise storytelling. These quotes, extracted from some of the most memorable short stories, highlight the power of words to inspire, provoke thought, and touch the heart. Dive into this selection and let these quotes rekindle your love for the art of short storytelling.

1. “Why ruin my sister's birthday simply because the entire planet was going to hell in a hand basket?” - T.C. Boyle

2. “Of course you know him. Everyone knows a pear-shaped man.” - George R.R. Martin

3. “You know," Daddy said, "it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!” - Flannery O'Connor

4. “Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz” - William L.K.

5. “These short stories are vast structures existing mostly in the subconscious of our cultural history. They will live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That's because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs. A good short story asks a question that can't be answered in simple terms. And even if we come up with some understanding, years later, while glancing out of a window, the story still has the potential to return, to alter right there in our mind and change everything.” - Walter Mosley

6. “From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the "River of Silence"; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.” - Edgar Allan Poe

7. “I'm not named after the character,' she said. 'I'm named after the entire opera.” - Julie Orringer

8. “I wondered how it could be that people could love God and hate one another.” - Julie Orringer

9. “Even if I had convict ancestry, I wouldn’t be ashamed of it. As far as I’m concerned, the real criminals back in those days weren’t twelve-year-old boys nicking a loaf of bread or a pair of socks to ward off hunger and blisters. No, it was those who exploited them; keeping the battler in the gutter while they sat around in their manors, sipping tea and admiring portraits of their toffee-nosed great grandfathers.” - Cameron Trost

10. “- I don’t know what else to say.- There is nothing else to say. A few minutes of words can’t change years of absurdity.” - Cameron Trost

11. “Dua kebaikan yang berbeda tidak mungkin berada pada satu intensitas yang sama. Sesederhana itu.” - Fredrik Nael

12. “Gerisik angan dan deru lembut laju harapan.Waktu itu adalah menit-menit akhir menjelang malam di Bukit Angin. Daun-daun berwarna-warni dalam berbagai wujud melayang ke langit dan berkumpul mengelilingi puncak pusaran angin. Di sana, di balik awan, beradalah studio Sang Pelukis.” - Fredrik Nael

13. “Segala hal yang dikatakan Komandan mengenai Orde adalah kebenaran yang tidak dilebih-lebihkan. Orde memang bersinonim dengan kebaikan. Orde menghargai kemajuan. Orde mencintai kehidupan. Orde bahkan mengajarkan pertobatan. Semua yang dijabarkan di dalam Kitab pada dasarnya akan berakhir pada kebahagiaan, pun setelah kematian.Akan tetapi Orde dan Kitab adalah takdir. Yang tidak dapat dibantah dan harus diterima semua orang dengan pasrah.Sama seperti penglihatanku, Orde tidak memberikan pilihan.” - Fredrik Nael

14. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.” - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

15. “She craved a family, not having had enough of one to understand what a pain in the ass it was.” - Maile Meloy

16. “Diabetes is passed that way -- over and down, like a knight in chess.” - Maile Meloy

17. “It was 911 calling me. If you can believe it. Them calling me.” - Robin Black

18. “It's unexpectedly painful to have become a pronoun.” - Robin Black

19. “What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss - absolute bliss - as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle into every finger and toe?...” - Katherine Mansfield

20. “If a nuclear disaster occurred, and you had to live out those final painful days just stretched out somewhere thinking about your life--This is who I am. This is what I love. This is what I believe--who would you want hearing your whispers? Or perhaps better: Who do you trust to hear your whispers? Whose breath do you want mingled with your own? Whose flesh still warm beside you?” - Jill McCorkle

21. “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

22. “I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.” - Donald Barthelme

23. “He felt a little lost, after that experience. Lost as the girls on their knees. It was a never-ending story of young girls losing themselves, such that they were no longer humans with any souls or characters, but pretty girls with fat asses and nice tits.” - Jess C. Scott

24. “For the biographer, the final clue to character lies in the yet unread - the scribbled note, the diary page, a notation in the margin of a draft - until the day when even the most devoted portraitist of the dead says, "Enough!" Working in the service of the dead, biographers quit their labors only when the sole remaining task is the impossible - resurrection.” - Laura Furman

25. “She was the curator of her marriage, collector of swift quotes and unremarked-upon sensations.” - Laura Furman

26. “Beauty without the beloved is a like a sword through the heart.” - Ida Alexa Ross Wylie

27. “The vibrations he felt in his sleep had nothing to do with his soul easing out of his body as he dreamily thought; they came solely from the weight and motion of the freight train rolling north to deliver fuel, furniture and other items having no relevance to Elijah’s life or his dreaming. On the metal rail his arm itched like a nose with a feeling that something bad was about to happen. In another life the sound of the train would have been reminiscent of certain songs by Muddy Waters or even Bruce Springsteen but not in this one. In this life the sound stabbed viciously against the night exactly like a human being demonstrating flawless disrespect for the life of another human being.--from short story ELIJAH’S SKIN” - Author-Poet Aberjhani

28. “He had read much of things as they are, and talked with too many people. Well-meaning philosophers had taught him to look into the logical relations of things, and analyse the processes which shaped his thoughts and fancies. Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.” - H.P. Lovecraft

29. “We all have an ongoing narrative inside our heads, the narrative that is spoken aloud if a friend asks a question. That narrative feels deeply natural to me. We also hang on to scraps of dialogue. Our memories don’t usually serve us up whole scenes complete with dialogue. So I suppose I’m saying that I like to work from what a character is likely to remember, from a more interior place.” - Lydia Davis

30. “That, too, was in the air itself -- a whisper of apology when the smell of the soil carried. There should be pumpkins in the fields, or sunflowers, or the peppers you saw up north. Instead, it was the smell of old earth that the breezes caught, sometimes a tinge of death. Too hard to forget.” - Christian Crews

31. “The divorce papers remained unopened in the crisp yellow envelope. He had thrown it on his desk without a backward glance. Between his lashes, his dark chocolate eyes burned with fury but there was something else in the depths that she hadn’t seen in a long time, passion.” - Suzan Battah

32. “I’m mistaken….for thinking you were someone with a heart worth breaking.” - Jamie Weise

33. “I wait, you play. You speak, I cave. I promise, you break. You game me, daily, you play me.” - Jamie Weise

34. “The Scottish sun, shocked by having its usual cloudy underpinnings stripped away, shone feverishly, embarrassed by its nakedness.” - Stuart Haddon

35. “He keeps going, going, going on; his people groan and fall one after the other, but he keeps on going, going and in the end, perishes himself, but still remains the despot and tsar of the desert because the cross over his grave is visible to caravans thirty-forty miles away and reigns over the wasteland.” - Anton Chekhov

36. “That night I sat up writing in my diary writing to Big Me: 'I hope you are alive ' I wrote. 'I hope that I don't die before you are able to read this.” - Dan Chaon

37. “We leave such a trail of bodies through our teens and twenties that it's hard to tell which one is us. How many versions do we abandon over the years” - Dan Chaon

38. “She looked at me as if I might be one of them a spy from the world of the ignorant.” - Dan Chaon

39. “For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.” - William H. Gass

40. “she should have told me that times slides away on a hillside of lose shale and takes everything in its path-dreams, opportunities, hopes. And youth. It takes that fastest of all.” - Kristin Hannah

41. “Apalah gunanya impian bila tidak diwujudkan?” - Fredrik Nael

42. “He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.” - Amy Hempel

43. “I'm either on the cusp of greatness or the edge of insanity.” - Meb Bryant

44. “Man, that kind of little honeybee just buzzes from flower to flower.""Maybe, but honey is sweet, you know?” - Colleen Coover

45. “He admired bears because everyone was afraid to disturb them while they slept and fish were so in love with bears that they jumper right into their mouths. He ate meat and never felt bad about it unless he saw how the animal was slaughtered or if the meat was not cooked properly but he thought thrice about killing bus.” - Robb Todd

46. “While there may not be a book in every one of us, there is so often a damned good short story.” - Jeffrey Archer

47. “The pupil of a goat's eye is elongate like a cat's, but if you look closely you'll see that it's in the horizontal position, and if you look closer still you'll see that it's less gracefully shaped, more of a ragged slot, dirty yellow. And you'll see that the white of a goat's eye is all black.” - Eugene Marten

48. “Alice is fictional. This isn't.” - Jess C. Scott

49. “I’ve been asking you to marry me since we met! What more do you want?” - Chayada Welljaipet

50. “I imagine I should have told it to you before? I love you, Sejal.I wish for you to become my wife.Recently I’ve also opened a shop in North Dakota and thinking that, just maybe, you love me too.” - Chayada Welljaipet

51. “Thank you father, thank you. I know you watched me from above and protected me. I promise I shall serve the Magnarian Confederation with all my body and soul. I shall dedicate myself fully to our confederation, the family that you so loved. And I love it too. I shall protect, love and respect it always. This is my promise and commitment. Thank you” - Chayada Welljaipet

52. “Oh no, princess. I would never carry out anything which could harm your being. This was just something I was told to say. I'm not sure what is planned, if, you go against their wishes. But, I'm sure you're smart and won't test them.” - Chayada Welljaipet

53. “Absently, Quinn reached for the sheet to replace it over the aged mirror, but the back of his hand brushed against the cold surface and a strange shiver ran up his arm and down his spine. ~ "The Mirror” - Cassie McCown

54. “Junk?” Gram gasped. “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure, you know.”“Yeah, well, maybe it’s time to let another man have it, you think?” he teased. ~ "The Mirror” - Cassie McCown

55. “The frame of the mirror was a deep mahogany and carved with an intricate design of what appeared in the dim light to be leaves and vines. The mirror’s surface was clouded with dust and age, so much that Quinn could not even see his own reflection. On impulse, he rubbed a small circle with the back of his wrist but beneath the dust the glass was still milky and unclear. ~ "The Mirror” - Cassie McCown

56. “As he carefully made his way back to the stairs and awkwardly turned off the light, he did not notice that the dark shadow he had assumed was his reflection remained in the mirror. He didn’t see the hands press against the surface and make large, liquid-like bulges beneath the glass. Nor did he hear the whispers that so suddenly and violently filled the dark, cluttered space as he had closed and locked the heavy attic door. ~ "The Mirror” - Cassie McCown

57. “There, in the corner under the window—the window through which he thought he saw movement before—was a slender white foot! Quinn’s heart froze in his chest and frightened bile began working its way up his esophagus. ~ "The Mirror” - Cassie McCown

58. “Reluctantly, he put his hand up to the cold glass. That odd tingling sensation raced through his body again. His ears began to hum and his head felt strange and heavy. Beneath his touch, the glass seemed to soften and his fingers made small indentions in the surface. ~ "The Mirror” - Cassie McCown

59. “In her hand was a necklace with a small oval pendant, a half of a locket engraved with one of the same symbols from the mirror frame—what Quinn saw as rolling waves. ~ "The Mirror” - Cassie McCown

60. “As though she had entered a fable, as though she were no more than words crawling along a dry page, or as though she were becoming that page itself, that surface on which her story would be written and across which there blew a hot and merciless wind, turning her body to papyrus, her skin to parchment, her soul to paper.” - Salman Rushdie

61. “And yet it was also true that the tumor could not be removed by our doctor, and as a result of that a strange medication had been given him that enabled my brother to become even more of an enigma than he was before, and as a result of that there came to exist not only the machine and the inertia that came with it, but a change of perspective among the townsfolk that was a result of their interactions with the various phases of my brother. And so it was that when the flood began to rear its terrible head, not only was there the inertia that we all had to deal with, but a sense of the sublime that we had begun to feel for the waters which had roared upon the horizon.” - Justin Dobbs

62. “Happy birthday,” she said. “And next time? Eat the stupid cupcake.” - Rachel Caine

63. “Inside the room there sat a rocker, which she sat on, and which had rocked her while she sipped the beer, because in spite of herself she had become so giddy to have so quickly relieved her heart that she allowed herself to lean backwards while in the rocker, which had made it possible for the rocker to rock her, although it was not her intention to be so rocked. Also there stood an ironing board with a still hot iron on it that was burning a yellow shift, and there was, among several items that were not as noticeable to the woman, and yet were noticeable enough to at least bear mention, a fake man."I hope you don't mind me asking," said the woman who lived in the room, but then while in her chair she nodded off.” - Justin Dobbs

64. “First contact comes not by hand of man, but by metal of machine.” - Ryan Sean O'Reilly

65. “It is a happiness to wonder; -- it is a happiness to dream.” - Edgar Allan Poe

66. “They were each like a mirror for the other, reflecting the changes in themselves.” - Haruki Murakami

67. “I learned there were lots of realities in the world.” - Haruki Murakami

68. “For one… If you shoot me and your boss realizes it was without good reason, you’ll have fucked up your trial period. And trust me; I know you’re still in it.” Ian pulled open a drawer in a small brown cabinet.“Secondly, it could end very badly for me and I’d rather prevent that. Getting shot is not on my list of things to do today.” He wrapped his hand around the steel grip of his own weapon and removed it from the drawer.“And last but not least, if you plan to shoot me… Well, it’ll be a matter of which of us is quicker and has better aim.” A pleasant smile crossed his features and he casually waved the gun from side to side. “Do you want to risk it?” - Natasha McNeely

69. “My great-great grandfather and I were best of friends, although we never met.Fire and shipwreck orphan us – 140 years apart. We escape to imagination to survive our fate. There, midst flights of whimsy we find one another. Companionship quells our loneliness. We create fables and tales, shields against a harsh existence. We must battle animals and humans of prey.Together, he, the future abolitionist-publisher James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction, and I vault from glory-laden adventures to tragedy and then to triumph. I am Raji Singh and this is my story.” - Raji Singh

70. “A good story is like a well-placed punch: quick, effective, and impossible to ignore.” - R L Raymond

71. “I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war," EPICAC had written after Pat's and my lighthearted departure. "I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever so Pat will love me. But fate has made me a machine. That is the only problem I cannot solve. That is the only problem I want to solve. I can't go on this way." I swallowed hard. "Good luck, my friend. Treat our Pat well. I am going to shortcircuit myself out of your lives forever. You will find on the remainder of this tape a modest wedding present from your friend, EPICAC.” - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

72. “It is better to take the other road, even if it's longer. Get a car, maybe" Green Eyes” - A.G. Billig

73. “The serious writer was aware of a paradox at the heart of his art: his inner world, the place of the strongest stories, was infinite, but it was also embedded in – if this was possible! – an even more infinite universe of all things to write about. It was like seeing the Grand Canyon from outer space – a huge gorge that looked like a thin trickle, impossible to miss, hard to hit.” - Marcus Speh

74. “I was cautious in what I said before the young lady; for I could not be sure that she was sane; and, in fact, there was a certain restless brilliancy about her eyes that half led me to imagine she was not.” - Edgar Allan Poe

75. “I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief.” - Edgar Allan Poe

76. “I won’t have you calling me Miss Tuttle. That’s what the doc calls me. And the lady at the bank. One takes my temperature and the other my money. Friends don’t take anything—they give.” - Diane Lynn McGyver

77. “You have to make choices even when there is nothing to choose from.” - Péter Zilahy

78. “The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world; there's precious little economic incentive to write one...” - Lawrence Block

79. “Humans are aware of very little, it seems to me, the artificial brainy side of life, the worries and bills and the mechanisms of jobs, the doltish psychologies we've placed over our lives like a stencil. A dog keeps his life simple and unadorned.” - Brad Watson

80. “Shh, mi amor. The neighbors will hear and call the police.” - Kate Richards

81. “The truth is I’m a chicken shit coward who’s afraid of a girl like you. When I’m with you, I want things I never thought I’d be able to have, or deserved, and that scares me a little. I’m just a regular guy who works in a bar and you’re this beautiful person who shines brighter than the stars.I think I just made up some cheesy poetry so I’ll stop while I’m ahead.If you feel like talking, give me a call. ~DSophie sat down on the floor and, through blurry eyes, reread the note so many times she had it memorized. She was going to do more than give him a call.” - Jenny Lyn

82. “Kalau aku adalah odol. Maka aku akan jatuh cinta padamu. Si jerawat bandel yang terluka. Karena aku, ingin menyembuhkan lukamu.” - Hilda Nurina Sabikah

83. “Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who are all happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.” - Katherine Mansfield

84. “Yes, the saint was underrated quite a bit, then, mostly by people who didn’t like things that were ineffable……a lot of people don’t like things that are unearthly, the things of this earth are good enough for them, and they don’t mind telling you so. “If he’d just go out and get a job, like everybody else, then he could be saintly all day long…” —from “The Temptations of St. Anthony,” by Donald Barthelme” - Donald Barthelme

85. “As writers we live life twice, like a cow that eats its food once and then regurgitates it to chew and digest it again. We have a second chance at biting into our experience and examining it. ...This is our life and it's not going to last forever. There isn't time to talk about someday writing that short story or poem or novel. Slow down now, touch what is around you, and out of care and compassion for each moment and detail, put pen to paper and begin to write.” - Natalie Goldberg

86. “He plunged into the foliage, and was swept into a humid, wet world of towering trees, animal chirps and thick ferns. After a few steps, he turned, and could barely make out the village. He walked a few more steps. He could see nothing now except for the thick trees and long ferns and grasses that surrounded him. He was enveloped into the confined space between trees, surrounded by the jungle heat and staccato chirps. He turned in the direction of the village, but could only see thick, dense trees. Hoping his sense of direction had not been muddled, he turned back around to the direction of the alleged ocean, and kept walking.Now the calls he heard sounded more and more strange. How far had he walked by now? The jungle, or rain forest, whatever it was, did not relent, and he kept on weaving into narrow gaps between the sturdy ferns and towering trees, pressing onwards. This continued for a seemingly oppressive amount of time, and he began to doubt his decision. To come to this place. To take a chance with his life, which was going in the right direction. Why couldn’t he be happy with the normal and mundane, he cursed, scolding his own stubbornness” - T.P. Grish

87. “His cell-phone rang. Dominic fumbled for it on the nightstand next to the couch, the dim lights not helping his endeavour. He had piercing, generic, banal fluorescent lights on his face all the time at work and at University, it was so bad it made him loathe even natural sunlight. Lucky this apartment’s living room light had a dimmer. He flipped open his phone and said hello. ‘Hey Dom, how you doin’?’ a voice boomed. It was Ben. They proceeded to talk about the upcoming exams, which were deceptively close as it was week 10 at the moment. Yes, they would be alright. Yes, they would meet up afterwards. No, he hadn’t studied more than Ben had. As he clapped the phone closed after the genial conversation reached its natural nadir, he had forgotten most of what had been said” - T.P. Grish

88. “Inside a wool jacket the man had made a pocket for the treasure and from time to time he would jiggle the pocket, just to make sure that it was still there. And when on the train he rode to work he would jiggle it there also, but he would disguise his jiggling of the treasure on the train by devising a distraction. For example, the man would pretend to be profoundly interested in something outside the train, such as the little girl who seemed to be jumping high up on a trampoline, just high enough so that she could spy the man on the train, and in this way he really did become quite interested in what occurred outside the train, although he would still jiggle the treasure, if only out of habit. Also on the train he'd do a crossword puzzle and check his watch by rolling up his sleeve; when he did so he almost fell asleep. Antoine often felt his life to be more tedious with this treasure, because in order not to be overly noticed he had deemed it wise to fall into as much a routine as possible and do everything as casually as possible, and so, as a consequence, despite the fact that he hated his wife and daughter, he didn't leave them, he came home to them every night and he ate the creamed chicken that his wife would prepare for him, he would accept the large, fleshy hand that would push him around while he sat around in his house in an attempt to read or watch the weather, he took out the trash, he got up on time every morning and took a quick, cold shower, he shaved, he accepted the cold eggs and orange juice and coffee, he picked the newspaper off the patio and took it inside with him to read her the top headlines, and of course he went to the job.” - Justin Dobbs

89. “A novel is just a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.” - George Saunders

90. “Sebuah cerpen yang tidak bagus, tetapi siap adalah lebih baik daripada sebuah cerpen yang kononnya bagus, tetapi tidak siap-siap.” - Nisah Haji Haron

91. “By Jove, it's great! Walk along the streets on some spring morning. The little women, daintily tripping along, seem to blossom out like flowers. What a delightful, charming sight! The dainty perfume of violet is everywhere. The city is gay, and everybody notices the women. By Jove, how tempting they are in their light, thin dresses, which occasionally give one a glimpse of the delicate pink flesh beneath!"One saunters along, head up, mind alert, and eyes open. I tell you it's great! You see her in the distance, while still a block away; you already know that she is going to please you at closer quarters. You can recognize her by the flower on her hat, the toss of her head, or her gait. She approaches, and you say to yourself: 'Look out, here she is!' You come closer to her and you devour her with your eyes."Is it a young girl running errands for some store, a young woman returning from church, or hastening to see her lover? What do you care? Her well-rounded bosom shows through the thin waist. Oh, if you could only take her in your arms and fondle and kiss her! Her glance may be timid or bold, her hair light or dark. What difference does it make? She brushes against you, and a cold shiver runs down your spine. Ah, how you wish for her all day! How many of these dear creatures have I met this way, and how wildly in love I would have been had I known them more intimately."Have you ever noticed that the ones we would love the most distractedly are those whom we never meet to know? Curious, isn't it? From time to time we barely catch a glimpse of some woman, the mere sight of whom thrills our senses. But it goes no further. When I think of all the adorable creatures that I have elbowed in the streets of Paris, I fairly rave. Who are they! Where are they? Where can I find them again? There is a proverb which says that happiness often passes our way; I am sure that I have often passed alongside the one who could have caught me like a linnet in the snare of her fresh beauty.” - Guy de Maupassant

92. “The farmhouse sat on a rise at the end of a long dirt road, in a clearing surrounded by fruit trees and ninety acres of pines. It was painted white, and peeling, and some former hippie tenant had painted a mandala on the wall just inside the door with fine-point Magic Marker. I painted over it, but it bled through, again and again. I finally left it there, a pale and pastel version of itself, hanging ghostlike in the hall.” - Marjorie Hudson

93. “My name is Patricia Lauren Bordeaux, and I, like my creator before me, am a very lonely vampire.” - S.C. Parris

94. “He stood just near the club’s steps, his back to me along the foggy English night, and it was not until I’d passed him and began my ascent of the many steps that I’d heard his voice. The voice I knew, in all my years of living upon the Earth, that I would never forget. Even then I had known this. It was the slippery way of his tongue, or perhaps it was the coolness of which his words passed across the air and slid its way into my ears as though they were only meant for me.” - S.C. Parris