You’re never too old to laugh at stories about love and sex.

Soon I find myself squatting on the floor. I am still striking my face; not with my fists this time, but with wide-open hands. I am slapping myself. The sounds I make when my palms...

This town of churches and dreams; this town I thought I would lose myself in, with its backward ways and winding roads leading to nowhere; but, I found myself instead. -Magic in the Backyard (excerpt...

It’s a case of mistaken identity. It’s one big mistake. You weren’t even in the country when it happened.”Maja in the short story ‘Metro’ by Steen Langstrup

No one is on this road, she thought. No one but us. Everyone knows this isn’t the place to be at three o’clock on a summer afternoon. Everyone but us.

Kids believe in Santa; adults believe in childhood.

As though you read my mind, you steady my headbetween your hands and eye me intensely. Then yourmouth is on mine, hungry and aggressive. Your teethskim my lips, claiming me and I feel your tongue...

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

There are myriad kisses in a relationship: desperate ones as involuntary as breathing, stolen ones on crowded trains, ceremonial ones at the front door, routine ones as dispassionate as licking an envelope. It takes two...

There’s an immense dramatic possibility in describing that universe. The books, for me, were an enormous relief in that sense of how they were written to allow primary emotion, elemental emotion, to matter enormously but...

Dear family,I am drafting a new laundry protocol for better and more considerate usage of the washing machine

All his senses screamed in warning, the very air reeking of forbidden magic, but duty call him forward.

Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency—a chaos—, an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end...

On the Writing Process:”When in doubt, take it out.,

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle…. A page of good prose seems to me the...

Have you ever been in jail, mate? Whatever you did in your life, nothing can be compared to a single day in jail.

Only the foolish, blinded by language’s conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it’s melancholy rim, green in it’s envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it’s greatest...

Short stories are often treated as the poor cousins of novels.

I am going to put you over my knee and spank you for being such a bad wife tonight. It will hurt, but you’re going to enjoy it a lot more than you’ll admit…

I read your diary. I KNOW

The times have changed and now the story is old, but yet it all remains the same, a victim in the cold.

We should follow every supply that runs into the particular lake below, going upstream in terms of we can. When we do not find Drakes’ path, or even an additional, we should come back straight...

We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there’s an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves. If it wasn’t for our longing for these things, I doubt...

Death, is a beautiful conclusion to these short stories, that which we have so interestingly entitled, lives.

In the course of this story, and very soon now, it will be necessary to make some disclosures about Mr. Krupper of a nature too coarse to be dealt with very directly in a work...

Yes?’ he asked, looking at me over the sheet.‘I’m a writer temporarily down on my inspirations.’‘Oh, a writer, eh?’‘Yes.’‘Are you sure?’‘No, I’m not.’‘What do you write?’‘Short stories mostly. And I’m halfway through a novel.’‘A novel,...

I live in a house over there on the Island, and in that house there is a man waiting for me. When he drove up at the door I drove out of the dock because...

We lie to protect our children, and in lying we expose them to the greatest of harms

There was a brown substance inside and Chase had no doubt: it was heroin. Only a tiny amount, but very pure.” – Cutting Right to the Chase Vol.2

I thought a lighthouse is out at sea.

I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew...

Turn around.”Only two words, but they deliver such a sensual threat.I do as you ask without question. You are right behind me, breathing hard into the small of my neck, where I like to be...

That woman must have been a husky in a previous life.

I have this uncanny knack of falling for the most irrelevant men,my love story would be comprising of short stories.

Oh no, princess. I would never carry out anything which could harm your being. This was just something I was told to say. I’m not sure what is planned, if, you go against their wishes....

Just above Tommy’s face were the Maiden and the Troll, two of his oldest wall people. The troll lived in a cave deep in the woods. He was big (Tommy knew the troll was even...

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 one…

The exhausted earth groaned and quivered under the monotonous glare of the sun. Spirals of heat rose from the ground as if from molten lava. A panting lizard crawled painfully over the fevered rock in...

I hate that I got dealt shitty parents! I hate how you make me feel like scum! I hate that you’re always running away from me! And I hate that I ever fucking gave you...

A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

Once when I asked you if you still loved your wife, you said, Love leaves the back door open. Later, you said, Love like a hospital gown opens at the back. And you slipped out.

You’d better watch out, Chase. He’s passed over to the evil side.

The hurts from my last day with my father are healed now, but I want to remember where they were; I want to remember what I escaped for as long as I live.

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...

Yes, strip. Take off all of your clothes. I want to see you naked. Now please.”I feel dazed, yet I let my jacket fall to the floor, and start work on my shirt buttons. Your...

All that sweetness makes me feel weird. My sister was never the loving type.

I’d always hated cocktail parties. And this one was worse than most. Overdressed pseudo–people smiled plastic smiles, told one–upmanship stories with phony self–deprecation, then half–listened with painted–on sincerity to the one–upmanship rebuttals. Mannequins. Robots. Androids....

I’ve been asking you to marry me since we met! What more do you want?

With more time spent in their mother’s presence, Maggie kept topics of conversation to small stuff, seldom ever wanted to dig below the surface, learned from her mother: just be polite, which makes Callie’s own...