Ma's still nodding. "You're the one who matters, though. Just you." I shake my head till it's wobbling because there's no just me.
Emma DonoghueRead
The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Short stories focus on concise narratives without the need for extensive background.
This quote highlights the unique quality of short stories, which allows them to deliver impactful narratives without requiring an exhaustive exploration of a character's entire life. Instead, they can convey profound insights or emotions through brief, focused glimpses, illustrating the power of brevity in storytelling.
Themes
Short StoriesNarrativeBrevityLiteratureInsight
In practice
Example use cases
In a literature class when discussing the impact of short narratives.
More from Emma Donoghue
All quotes βAh yes, the paradox of publicity is that even as we do it, we know it's killing off the chance of another reader happening across our book in the ideal state of innocence.
Emma DonoghueRead
At the door, there was one of those moment when two people realize that they like each other more than they know each other. This is nicer than the opposite situation, but more awkward. You try to remember the protocol for touching. You hate to gush, or presume to much, yet you are unwilling to let the moment pass without without some gesture
Emma DonoghueRead
You cannot predict literary success; the only way you can possibly aim for it is to do your thing and do it well.
Emma DonoghueRead
Books are the air I breathe, so I don't notice the seasons.
Emma DonoghueRead
Writing stories is my way of scratching that itch: my escape from the claustrophobia of individuality. It lets me, at least for a while, live more than one life, walk more than one path. Reading, of course, can do the same.
Emma DonoghueRead
Similar quotes
Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious, very thin ones as more honest, more real. Writers address these age-old expectations by filling their big books with philosophy and cramming their little ones with feeling.
Walter KirnRead
People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.
Flannery O'ConnorRead
A novel is not moral in the usual sense of the word. It can be called moral when it shakes us out of our stupor and makes us confront the absolutes we believe in.
Azar NafisiRead
I was allowed to write about race using an elevator metaphor because of Toni Morrison and David Bradley and Ralph Ellison. Hopefully, me being weird allows someone who's 16 and wanting to write inspires them to have their own weird take on the world, and they can see the different kinds of African American voices being published.
Colson WhiteheadRead
Probably all of us, writers and readers alike, set out into exile, or at least into a certain kind of exile, when we leave childhood behind...The immigrant, the nomad, the traveler, the sleepwalker all exist, but not the exile, since every writer becomes an exile simply by venturing into literature, and every reader becomes an exile simply by opening a book.
Roberto BolanoRead
My experience is that prose usually equals duty - last minute, overdue-deadline stuff or a panic lecture to be written.
Seamus HeaneyRead