Best 281 quotes in «short story quotes» category

He'd done this hundreds of times: done a job, been drugged with a narcotic that erased his short term memory, and dumped in a seedy hole in the wall locale, where when he climbed out, he would have to figure out where he was, find a payphone, and call in for his next job.

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

Here’s to a tasty lunch,” she says, winking at me. It’s the strangest thing, but I actually feel my body respond to her. Beneath their lace prison, my nipples harden and send a jolt of arousal across my midriff and down to my thighs. I take a long sip of champagne and eye Rachel hungrily. I can’t be sure if it’s the alcohol or the company but I already feel giddy.

He’s in a side room alone with her and it’s far too fucking hot.

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.

He walked steadily, feeling them behind him. His stride did not falter; he pretended they weren’t there. He pretended that all was well—that those hideous things knew nothing about what he had done earlier in the night. But each pumpkin he passed nearly leapt off its porch or railing or wooden chair, expanded and morphed and throbbed as if in a funhouse mirror, and joined the procession behind him. The wind picked up, suddenly and fiercely, and construction paper decorations adorning the houses that surrounded him flapped helplessly against their doors and windows. The man ducked against the cold wind, and from the pursuing army of the jack-o’-lanterns behind him. Cardboard skeletons with fastener joints and witches with shredded yarn hair and ghosts with cotton ball sheets and black crayon eyes escaped their thumbtacks and scotch tape and newspaper twine and they flashed and danced in his face. He brushed at them desperately with his hands, attempting to tear a hole through them and escape.

High up overhead the snow settled among the tracery of the cathedral towers. Many a niche was drifted full; many a statue wore a long white bonnet on its grotesque or sainted head. The gargoyles had been transformed into great false noses, drooping toward the point. The crockets were like upright pillows swollen on one side. In the intervals of the wind there was a dull sound dripping about the precincts of the church.

His love with Lucy bled from his heart as he slipped into a dark despair— a melancholy that only she could sever with her chaste voice and tender kisses. Now in an unreachable darkness, a blindness took hold. A blood lust that would drive him mad for five years hence.

Hmmm,” you muse out loud. Your voice is deep and carnal, a sound which sends new surges of desire rushing to my sex. “These balls are awfully dusty - if only I knew a little slut who was good at polishing balls…

His lips turned upward. “Man told you to lick salt off me, but he didn’t say where you would be licking the salt from.

How talented was death. How many expressions and manipulations of hand, face, body, no two alike. They stood like the naked pipes of a vast derelict calliope, their mouths cut into frantic vents. And now the great hand of mania descended upon one hundred-throated, unending scream.

I am unbelievably nervous. It is most unlike me. This girl is really messing with my mojo.

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.

I couldn’t tolerate magicians who did things that someone who actually had magical powers would never do.

I changed and changed, and with more time I will change more.

Ideas either age like fine wine or rot like potatoes over time.

I decided an Akubra did not a bushy make - Ellen Read - An Ordinary Man .

I don't mind it so much when they're fully dead, you understand. Something that's supposed to be dead, and is dead, that's no surprise but there's something about a creature that GOING to be dead but isn't yet, something that KNOWS it's going to be dead and doesn't want to be. I've never liked that.

I did so want to hear a singer. I miss the sound of a woman's voice, the way they look and smell.

I don't think she can see her husband very often, for he teaches the university students during the day, and works at the telescope at night. I wonder if she hopes for cloudy nights and then feels guilty.

I doona ken. Explain that to me, Declan. Why do you matter to me so much?" His body shuddered giving her a slight thrill that she might affect him just as much as he affected her. Pulling back slightly, his eyes met hers. "Fiona, love, you doona ken what you're doin' to me.

I engage in subtle stalking. That's entirely different and perfectly socially acceptable.

I fell in love with her suddenly, deeply, in the most all-consuming way.

If certain aspect needs to be inconsistent, it must better be consistently inconsistent throughout the story.

If David Luís had known what the future had in store for his son, he would've named him anything else—anything.

I feel myself collapse inside as if the life force has been sucked out of me.

If I could do all of that on February 14th, it would be a personal best for me. Something to share with my crew for the glory and the laughs, or to cheer up the next buddy of mine to get dumped or cheated on. From "My Worst Valentine's Day.Ever: A Short Story

If I knew this is your final goodbye; I'd have told you that still I've a lot of things to say. I'd have told you how you changed my life, how you made me close to Me, how you made me realize the beauty of the world. If only I knew, this is your final goodbye... I'd have never let you say it...

If you are a singer, you must sing. If you are a dancer, you must dance. If you are a writer, you must write. Don’t suffocate your heart.

If I were reincarnated, I wouldn’t mind coming back as an undiscovered seahorse.

I had always been an atheist until I met Lenny. He was too wonderously complex and good for there to be no benevolent and intelligent force behind our marvelous cosmos. Lenny gave me the actual proof my fiercely skeptical mind had always demanded. Not some logical, 37-step proof of God's existence. It was a personal proof. And it was irrefutable.

If you think there is no time to write now, there will never be.

I gulped, mesmerized by his hypnotic eyes and charming, spearmint smile, and uttered something intelligent like,"Uh, huh." ~ from Dragon Flight

I hate this night. I hate that it makes me a person so truly removed from the real me; this man who sits in silence in his parlor – purposely quarantined from his family – is not who I want to be. But on Halloween night, this awful impostor wafts over me like morning fog, and I know there’s no resisting him. Like one anticipates the common cold brought on by a harsh winter, I know this broken and terrified man will soon be visiting when the evening of October 31st falls upon us. And on this yearly autumn night, he will sit and drink. And remember.

I’m an old man, now. I’ve been alone since my 17th birthday. I’d wanted to marry, have a bunch of kids, and maybe be a grandpa. The big family around the Thanksgiving table, laughing and pouring wine and cracking jokes and harmlessly teasing the missus—I wanted that. I wanted to do something good with my life—something right. I didn’t want what happened to Danny, my best childhood friend, to be the only mark I’d ever make in this world. But I thought it best not to fancy such hopes and dreams: a family, love. I’d been cursed by my best friend, and I thought it right not to inflict that curse on anyone who’d be foolish enough to love me.

I knew a girl and she felt like art. Sometimes colorful, sometimes dull, Sometimes with bright, hopeful eyes, Sometimes only black and white, But she was always a piece of exquisite art.

I'm either on the cusp of greatness or the edge of insanity.

I'm following hot on her heels, smarting from her latest rebuttal, and I can't contain my temper as the flood of rejection washes over me, tossing me precariously close to the edge.

I have nothing I want to ask you, and if I did, you would probably lie anyway.” “I’m drunk. Drunk people tell the truth.” “Like hell they do. Besides you’re not that drunk.” “Then dare me something.” I snorted. “No, because I’m not that drunk, or stupid.

I’m warning you because you’re young and vulnerable. He’s a dirty, lying, conniving piece of shit and he’s dangerous.” Gottfried Baumauer.

I'm not just the sum of how I look although that seems to be a popular opinion, and it infuriates me.

i’m super, it’s like my favourite meal and a birthday blowjob from Christina Hendricks in here.

I’m mistaken…. for thinking you were someone with a heart worth breaking.

I’m supposed to feel like it’s such a great apartment, but I don’t. It’s the right price, there are no bugs and it’s got a great view, but it’s the lair of Satan...--Nil Caveat

In all nature there seemed to be a feeling of hopelessness and pain. The earth, like a ruined woman sitting alone in a dark room and trying not to think of the past, was brooding over memories of spring and summer and apathetically waiting for the inevitable winter. Wherever one looked, on all sides, nature seemed like a dark, infinitely deep, cold pit from which neither Kirilov nor Abogin nor the red half-moon could escape....

I need to master the art of talking to her before I can even contemplate anything else.

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.

In high school, she’d been the loner fat girl and I’d been the asshole jock. There had always been something between us; we had gotten on so easily. I remember being both confused and upset that when I’d finally experienced that thing everyone called chemistry, it had been with her of all people.

In some mystical way, Lenny seemed to ennoble work more than anyone I had ever met" Also in "Stories and Scripts:an Anthology

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