Books Quote by Henry Seidel Canby

A good short story is a work of art which daunts us in proportion to its brevity.... No inspiration is too noble for it;…

— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

The short story seems like the best of all possible worlds. I do feel it is closer to writing poetry than to writing a…

— James Lasdun

A novel is achieved with hard work, the short story with inspiration.

— Isabel Allende

The function of the Short Story is to be interesting, to convey vivid impressions, an therefore it must, to a degree, work with the…

— Henry Seidel Canby

Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential.

— Jorge Luis Borges

Make the short story tremendously succinct - with a very short pulse or rhythm - and the closest selection of detail - in other…

— Henry James

(The short story) is a form that has all the power of the novel - some would say more - but none of the…

— Joseph O'Connor

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…

— Lawrence Block

A short story is "a short prose narrative, requiring from a half hour, to one or two hours in its perusal...having conceived, with deliberate…

— Edgar Allan Poe

When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult and disciplining form of prose writing extant. Whatever control and technique I…

— Truman Capote

Short stories have no net. The writer cannot take a leisurely sixty pages to get things moving, or make a side trip onto a…

— Amy Bloom

A short story is something that you can hold in your mind. You can really analyze how the entire thing works, like a machine.

— Chuck Palahniuk