A Quote by Irwin Shaw

My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever

Irwin Shaw

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Favorite John My Favorite Short Story Writer

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Irwin Shaw
American - Novelist
February 27, 1913 - May 16, 1984

My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever.

Irwin Shaw

John Cheever was the first writer I ever read who sort of had that similar sensation that, you know, life is nasty, miserable, brutish and short, but that occasionally, there's a certain river of light, a kind word, a telling gesture that sort of illuminates something.

Ethan Canin

Tom Kealey might be my favorite short story writer and this astonishing collection is long overdue.

Stephen Elliott

For a short-story writer, a story is the combination of what the writer supposed the story would likely be about - plus what actually turned up in the course of writing.

Carol Bly

One of my favorite writers is short story writer/essayist Jorge Luis Borges, who was blind. I'm not claiming to be anything remotely resembling a talent of Borges' caliber, but he is an inspiration and a proof that one can be a meaningful and successful writer while blind.

Larry Howes

My favorite writer is Alice Munro. It's simply amazing how well she captures entire lifetimes in a single short story.

Chloe Benjamin

I could never write about the sort of people John Cheever or John Updike or even Margaret Atwood write about. I don't mean I couldn't write as well as they do, which of course I couldn't; they're great writers, and I'm no writer at all. But I couldn't even write badly about normal, neurotic people. I don't know that world from the inside. That's just not my orientation.

Jim Woodring

Novels are my favorite to write and read. I do like writing personal essays, too. I'm not really a short story writer, nor do I tend to gravitate to them as a reader.

Dani Shapiro

I'm sure I've been influenced by every fine writer I've ever read, from Dickens and Austen to Auden and Jane Hirshfield. And also, the short stories of Updike, Cheever, Munro, Alice Adams, and Doris Lessing. And the plays of Oscar Wilde. And paintings by Alice Neel and Matisse.

Amy Bloom

While my favorite book of short stories is Fredrick Brown's 'Nightmares and Geezenstacks,' my favorite single story is 'Sound of Thunder,' by Ray Bradbury.

James Luceno

Alice Munro is a particular kind of short story writer in that she writes long, character-driven short stories.

Nell Freudenberger

I write to make sense of my life." -John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey

John Cheever

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

Lynn Abbey

The more original a short-story writer, the odder looking the assortment of things he or she puts together for a story.

Carol Bly

I didn't intend to become a short-story writer. I became one because I finished a couple of short stories and realized that's what I wanted to do and could do with children and with all the other things in my life.

Grace Paley

I've always loved short stories. Even before I was a writer, I was reading short stories - there were certain writers where I just felt like they could do in a short story what so many writers needed a whole novel to do, and that was really inspiring to me.

Molly Antopol

A Quote by Irwin Shaw

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