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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.

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
Writing
Never
Pleases
Please
Public
Forget
Story
Write
Stories

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I've got some of my best yarns from park benches, lamp posts and newspaper stands.
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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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Except in streetcars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady.
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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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In time truth and science and nature will adapt themselves to art. Things will happen logically, and the villain be discomfited instead of being elected to the board of directors. But in the meantime fiction must not only be divorced from fact, but must pay alimony and be awarded custody of the press despatches.
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Those whom we first love we seldom marry
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What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?
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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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Write what you like there is no other rule.
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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.
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By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed.
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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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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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It'll be a great place if they ever finish it.
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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.
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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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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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It was beautiful and simple, as truly great swindles are.
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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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