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I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.

O. Henry

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O. Henry
Age: 47 †
Born: 1862
Born: September 11
Died: 1910
Died: June 5
Journalist
Writer
Greensboro
North Carolina
William Sydney Porter
Olivier Henry
Oliver Henry
Write
Stories
Give
Insightful
Whole
Rule
Giving
Short
Writing
Please
Secret
Story

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Those whom we first love we seldom marry
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It ain't the roads we take it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.
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There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference.
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Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.
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Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces though there is some silly theory of gravitation.
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The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey.
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There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
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If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.
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Except in streetcars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady.
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Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
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Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.
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You can't appreciate home till you've left it, money till it's spent, your wife till she's joined a woman's club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.
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O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
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A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.
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The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative. A large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning man and it is not past belief that one may review an entire courtship while removing one's gloves.
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Women's weapon, water-drops.
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This fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul ... its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires and springs.
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If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call it, you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. Little old New York's good enough for us--that's what they sing.
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Greenwich Village... the village of low rents and high arts.
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History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.
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