All writers start with a layer of truth, don’t they? If not, their stories would be nothing but spools of cotton candy, a fleeting taste wrapped around nothing but air.
When was the last time someone read aloud to you? Probably when you were a child, and if you think back, you’ll remember how safe you felt, tucked under the covers, or curled in someone’s arms, as a story was spun around you like a web.
I would figure out, later, how to explain to my boss that, for me, Delia will never be a story, but a happy ending.
As far as I know, he never asked where she had been or why she had left and she never told. I guess some stories do not need telling.
A story is like a moving train: no matter where you hop onboard, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later.
Sad stories make good books.
You say their stories, it is gift they give you.
So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one.
I don’t outline at all; I don’t find it useful, and I don’t like the way it boxes me in. I like the element of surprise and spontaneity, of letting the story find its own way.
I guess some stories do not need telling.
I grew up with some kind of storytelling instinct, and when I write, my default setting is to find a story and then to tell it. It’s the only way I know how to write.
The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished.
Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.
The “germ,” wherever gathered, has ever been for me, “the germ of a story,” and most of the stories strained to shape under my hand have sprung from a single small seed, a seed as remote and windblown as a casual hint.
There’s always another story. There’s more than meets the eye.
Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.
My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
In short stories it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because, because – I don’t know why.
Babies do not want to hear about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles.
I was kind of unfriendly and suspicious of everyone around me. I didn’t talk until I was about 15. It’s a kind of famous story at my house.