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When I see a shipwreck, I like to know what caused the disaster...I learned nothing but the glow that wrapped her face when the soup came. That's the story.

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
Story
Glow
Faces
Wrapped
Stories
Soup
Nothing
Caused
Like
Disaster
Learned
Came
Face
Shipwreck

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It was beautiful and simple, as truly great swindles are.
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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.
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History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.
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Take of London fog 30 parts malaria 10 parts, gas leaks 20 parts, dewdrops gathered in a brickyard at sunrise 25 parts odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle.
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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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A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.
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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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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.
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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.
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Most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another.
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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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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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Men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat - seamy on both sides.
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Broadway - the great sluice that washes out the dust of the gold-mines of Gotham.
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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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Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow's grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature.
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Except in streetcars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady.
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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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Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hands he took it as a personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way.
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