Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Short
Giving
Please
Writing
Secret
Story
Write
Stories
Insightful
Give
Rule
Whole
More quotes by O. Henry
Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.
O. Henry
She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).
O. Henry
Whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines.
O. Henry
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.
O. Henry
There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.
O. Henry
What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?
O. Henry
Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills.
O. Henry
Greenwich Village... the village of low rents and high arts.
O. Henry
There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old age youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same.
O. Henry
History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.
O. Henry
I've got some of my best yarns from park benches, lamp posts and newspaper stands.
O. Henry
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.
O. Henry
By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed.
O. Henry
All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one another's presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best
O. Henry
A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.
O. Henry
If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.
O. Henry
Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
O. Henry
It'll be a great place if they ever finish it.
O. Henry
The magi, as you know, were wise men wonderfully wise men who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.
O. Henry
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.
O. Henry