“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”

“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”

“Halley believed that a kiss was the beginning of a story, the story, good or bad, short or long, of an us, and once begun, you had to follow it through to the end.”

“Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”

“A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.”

“Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories…cheerfulness would creep in. Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful.”