Flash Fiction Quotes

There is a novella inside every anus; there is a broken heart inside every mind; there is a bisected hug inside every arm; there is a pun inside every belly. "The Great American Novel," thinks the typographer, who at this point is severely constipated. He tries to squeeze out an 'o' but can't. "The Great American Navel," he says, then waits for a laugh. ~ Jimmy Chen

You look within and upon and around me, savoring every inch. You pull my ear for no reason, and I can tell you really don't want to cry. As a tear falls between by breasts, I look away and pretend the grass is a jungle, and the ants, little kings of forgotten tribes. ~ Virginia Petrucci

Let's press ahead a little further by sketching out a few variations among short shorts:

ONE THRUST OF INCIDENT. (Examples: Paz,
Mishima, Shalamov, Babel, W. C. Williams.) In these short shorts the time span is extremely brief, a few hours, maybe even a few minutes: Life is grasped in symbolic compression. One might say that these short shorts constitute epiphanies (climactic moments of high grace or realization) that have been tom out of their contexts. You have to supply the contexts yourself, since if the contexts were there, they'd no longer be short shorts.

LIFE ROLLED UP. (Examples: Tolstoy's 'Alyosha the Pot,' Verga's 'The Wolf,' D. H. Lawrence's 'A Sick Collier.') In these you get the illusion of sustained narrative, since they deal with lives over an extended period of time; but actually these lives are so compressed into typicality and paradigm, the result seems very much like a single incident. Verga's 'Wolf' cannot but repeat her passions, Tolstoy's Alyosha his passivity. Themes of obsession work especially well in this kind of short short.

SNAP-SHOT OR SINGLE FRAME. (Examples: Garda Marquez, Boll, Katherine Anne Porter.) In these we have no depicted event or incident, only an interior monologue or flow of memory. A voice speaks, as it were, into the air. A mind is revealed in cross-section - and the cut is rapid. One would guess that this is the hardest kind of short short to write: There are many pitfalls such as tiresome ~ Irving Howe

A shrink and a patient switching places. Who is REALLY the boss? ~ Mary Papas

Perhaps she moves too slowly now, or the world moves too fast for her. She enters the lift, a giant wheel turns and steel cables lower the mechanized box. The lift drops down a black shaft, which exists at the heart of each HDB block. The country may be described, not as a place covered with blocks of public housing, but a topography where black vertical shafts, some forty storeys tall, rise out of the ground like trees. ~ Justin Ker

For sale: baby shoes, never worn. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

That woman must have been a husky in a previous life. ~ Mary Papas

Aw honey. Today's as important as forever." Grandpa Joe in "Shave and a Haircut" Flash Warden and Other Stories ~ Eileen Granfors

I consider whoever my words land on to be my target, that's why I like flash fiction, it's a lot like using a shotgun. ~ Neil Leckman

The only man she ever loved. And hated. ~ Mary Papas

I don't see much difference between prose poems and flash fiction (I've often taught the latter as the former), but then I also don't see that much difference between art and poetry. ~ Matthea Harvey

Love enters later in life through the cracks left by the first heartbreak. ~ D. Biswas

He washed gold his entire life and remained poor his entire life. ~ Shouhua Qi

She would keep playing the role of the winner as long as the audience believed her. ~ Mary Papas

The usual short story cannot have a complex plot, but it often has a simple one resembling a chain with two or three links. The short short, however, doesn't as a rule have even that much - you don't speak of a chain when there's only one link. ...

Sometimes ... the short short appears to rest on nothing more than a fragile anecdote which the writer has managed to drape with a quantity of suggestion. A single incident, a mere anecdote - these form the spine of the short short.

Everything depends on intensity, one sweeping blow of perception. In the short short the writer gets no second chance. Either he strikes through at once or he's lost. And because it depends so heavily on this one sweeping blow, the short short often approaches the condition of a fable. When you read the two pieces by Tolstoy in this book, or I.L. Peretz's 'If Not Higher,' or Franz Kafka's 'The Hunter Gracchus,' you feel these writers are intent upon 'making a point' - but obliquely, not through mere statement. What they project is not the sort of impression of life we expect in most fiction, but something else: an impression of an idea of life. Or: a flicker in darkness, a slight cut of being. The shorter the piece of writing, the more abstract it may seem to us. In reading Paz's brilliant short short we feel we have brushed dangerously against the sheer arbitrariness of existence; in reading Peretz's, that we have been brought up against a moral reflection on the nature of goodne ~ Irving Howe

Day 72
I remember oranges and you don't mind me leaving the queue momentarily to find some. When you say, Of course, you reach for my arm in sympathy and recognition. This may be the thing that breaks me today, that stops me in my tracks before driving me forward, turning a corner, making something work, letting everything happen. When I return, you're touching my yoghurts, reading the ingredients, as though you are making them yours, protecting them in my absence and amusing yourself with the cherry-ness of them. On days like this, I want to take my strangers home with me. ~ Gemma Seltzer

Shaw Centre has restaurants on the fourth floor, where the ACS boy can pull chairs out for her. Girls love this because no one else does it for them, especially not those sotong RI boys. ~ Justin Ker

So when she looked in the mirror one day, and saw the beginning of thorny protrusions on her legs, a slight greenish tinge to her skin, she sighed.

It was inevitable. - The Monster In Her Bedroom, Havok Magazine, Issue 1.1 ~ Katherine Valdez

She wakes up loving him, but not hard enough. He has dandelion hair. Stars fall and zip between them, they can't stop laughing; she falls asleep curled around him like a comma. He is gay, and often, he reminds her that she deserves better. She nods seriously and then forgets. ~ Meg Pokrass

A shrink and a patient in a love-hate relationship. Who is REALLY the boss? ~ Mary Papas

The man she wanted existed only in the romantic novels she was reading. She had met him. But he would never meet her. ~ Mary Papas

Write. Edit. Repeat. ~ Miles White

She would keep playing the role as long as the audience fell for it ~ Mary Papas

An infinite number of monkeys have said an infinite number of things about the Hugos this year. People on all sides have said intelligent and insightful things, and people on all sides have said asinine things. The amount of words spent on this makes the Wheel of Time saga look like flash fiction. ~ Jim C. Hines

The rain is a screen that changes the colour of the sky, causing a sepia filter to fall over the city. It is as if the city has gone back in time, to the age before the invention of full-coloured photographs. Light becomes suffused and quiet. ~ Justin Ker

I'm not a 'long writer' and have never wanted to write a novel or even a novella. Poetry, like flash fiction, provides a readily accessible canvas to play with. Whether to express an emotion or share a vignette, these forms are often interchangeable. ~ Marge Simon

Dunce is completely bald and has a really pointed head so the temptation to get him paralytic on his thirtieth birthday, carry him to the tattooist's and get a nice big 'D' smack bang in the middle of his forehead was too much for me. Trouble is he can't afford to have it removed so he wears a big plaster over it. Gangs of children tease him.

'What's underneath the plaster, mister? Show us!'

They swear he has a third eye under there.

My name is Bill but Dunce calls me 'Fez' on account of my hat. I've known Dunce for over sixteen years. ~ Mike Russell

Still speaking over me,' she says, meeting my eyes and scoffing. 'You are still that worthless little girl. ~ Rebecca Berto

..the happy hum of humanity. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

I think Junior is certainly a science fiction premise as is Twins, as is Dave, beyond Ghostbusters. ~ Ivan Reitman

At the entrance of the Führerbunker, a dandelion pushed through the crack between cobblestones. The cadet did not notice that he stepped on it as they entered the bunker.

A dark cloud of smoke rose from a burning ministry. Zeller fantasized that the filth that surrounded him was cleansed. He saw himself, a portly and tailored leader in a white uniform with gold epaulets, buttons, and stripes.

He imagined himself in an immaculate, white city in Antarctica. ~ Paul Majkut

New Adult is a label that is condescending to readers and authors alike. It implies that the books act as training wheels between Young Adult and Adult. For the New Adult books that are particularly childish, the label implies that they are a step above Young Adult
which is insulting to the Young Adult books that are far superior. For the New Adult books that are particularly sophisticated, the label implies that they are not worthy of being considered "adult." It's a lose-lose situation for everyone.
[ ... ]
Therefore, the new genre of New Adult is a large step backwards. It increases the system of categories and labels even further, and prevents readers from expanding their horizons and minds. The term is reductive and it is insulting to its own audience. ~ Lauren Sarner

What said those two souls communicating through the language of the eyes, more perfect than that of the lips, the language given to the soul in order that sound may not mar the ecstasy of feeling? In such moments, when the thoughts of two happy beings penetrate into each other's souls through the eyes, the spoken word is halting, rude, and weak - it is as the harsh, slow roar of the thunder compared with the rapidity of the dazzling lightning flash, expressing feelings already recognized, ideas already understood, and if words are made use of it is only because the heart's desire, dominating all the being and flooding it with happiness, wills that the whole human organism with all its physical and psychical powers give expression to the song of joy that rolls through the soul. To the questioning glance of love, as it flashes out and then conceals itself, speech has no reply; the smile, the kiss, the sigh answer. ~ Jose Rizal

It was as though everything that mattered was encapsulated in that last moment of my blissful state of oblivion. ~ Sarah Swainson

Those who say truth is stranger than fiction have wasted their time on poorly written fiction. ~ Mark Twain

I am pretty. I am healthy. I can look at myself in the mirror and accept myself for me and not for what people want to see. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Splendid . . . a novel for anyone who has a sharp eye and ear for life. ~ NPR S All Things Considered

Remember, we all have to start from somewhere. You made another step today. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Go back to the band, Egg. Please." - Bex ~ Jamie Scallion

Keep up your determination and drive, because you have the willpower to fight off your weakness. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written. ~ Robert Hass

Meanwhile, the great ash would rest where she lay, and mosses would creep over her trunk, and tiny creatures make their homes her dim hollows. Even in death she was a link in the great chain of the forest's being. ~ Juliet Marillier

I am ready to fly with both wings! ~ Charlena E. Jackson

My wings have been clipped for so long - I am trying my best to help myself by opening up as I slowly grow back my brittle and fragile wings. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Why not take a science fiction comic and put the characters in a small town to gain their particular perspective? A lot of that comes from me growing up in a small town on a farm, so that's what I know and what I'm comfortable with. My drawing style is also very sparse and minimalist, so a rural setting complements that. ~ Jeff Lemire

Fear is not welcome in my head, heart, or my soul. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Witness testimony is always flawed. It's better than circumstantial evidence, sure, but people aren't camcorders; they don't record every action and reaction, and the very act of remembering involves chosing words, actions and images. In other words, any witness who was supposed to be giving a court facts is really just giving them a version of fiction. ~ Jodi Picoult

If it's fiction, then it better be true. ~ Sherman Alexie

They say that right before you die your whole life flashes before you – a medley of your own personal greatest hits. Well then, I must be about to live, because events that haven't happened yet are constantly pushing themselves into my head. ~ Emlyn Chand

No matter where she went, God was her family. He was her hope. ~ Tricia Goyer

Writing fiction is fun. Writing non-fiction is life-changing. ~ A.D. Posey

My mortgage isn't getting any cheaper and I can't run that Ferrari on faith alone," Reverend Jones said. "Don't get me wrong, the Big Man upstairs does what he can but I've never once seen him filling up the tank of my car. ~ Mark Jackman

It's like he's picking up parts of the world and showing them to me, saying, See? It's beautiful. ~ Cath Crowley

I loved writing fiction. I mean, once I found the character, or the characters, and knew who they were and knew their back-stories, it really - I mean, I went into my studio every day, thinking, 'What's gonna happen to Billy today?' ~ Ruth Reichl

I know you think I am a bad
boy, a bad dog, Bang-Bang told him
with a pointed stare. He placed his
paw in his Tall One's hand. But
know that I am with you. That I will
not leave you. ~ Susan Grant

Freedom of the will is a psychological fiction. ~ Louis Berkhof

I fell silent after that. I didn't want to talk about such things anymore, at least today. My chest already hurt and I was trying to keep my mind calm. I didn't want to think of a future so bleak and dark. I had plans for my future and they didn't involve the world ending or society collapsing. ~ J.M. Northup

The British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the stuff of greatness whereas certain contemporary Americans indubitably are. Their critics often advance the exact opposite: British fiction is cool, American naff. ~ Will Self

The only thing more interesting than the truth is fiction dressed up as the truth. ~ S.A. Tawks

One can easily classify all works of fiction either as descendants of the Iliad or of the Odyssey. ~ Raymond Queneau