Shorter Quotes

1. "I read everything I could find in English - Twain, Henry James, Hemingway, really everything. And then after a while I started writing shorter pieces in English, and one of them got published in a literary magazine and that's how it got started. After that, graduate school didn't seem very important."
Author: Aleksandar Hemon

2. "You could tell them why they should hire you so very much better than I could. But they won't listen to you and they'll listen to me. Because I'm the middleman. The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line--it's a middleman. And the more middlemen, the shorter. Such is the psychology of a pretzel."
Author: Ayn Rand

3. "We're a nation with an eating disorder, and we know it. The multiple maladies caused by bad eating are taking a dire toll on our health--most tragically for our kids, who are predicted to be this country's first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. That alone is a stunning enough fact to give us pause. So is a government policy that advises us to eat more fruits and vegetables, while doling out subsidies not to fruit and vegetable farmers, but to commodity crops destined to become soda pop and cheap burgers. The Farm Bill, as of this writing, could aptly be called the Farm Kill, both for its effects on small farmers and for what it does to us, the consumers who are financing it."
Author: Barbara Kingsolver

4. "Film is much more visual, a scene is typically a lot shorter, you're dealing with a lot more characters, a lot more locations, and you're able to rely on things that you just can never do on the stage."
Author: Beau Willimon

5. "My post-child period resulted in one instant change: I write shorter books for kids."
Author: Berkeley Breathed

6. "He considers the theatrical version of Fanny and Alexander an amputated version of what his original film was, and he doesn't really like the shorter film."
Author: Bille August

7. "I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter."(Letter 16, 1657)"
Author: Blaise Pascal

8. "Common sense solutions to lowering your gasoline bills can go far. Carpooling, taking fewer or shorter road trips, and ensuring that your tires are fully inflated can all help stop the pinch at the pump."
Author: Bob Ney

9. "On the other hand, chess is a mass sport now and for chess organisers shorter time control is obviously more attractive. But I think that this control does not suit World Championship matches."
Author: Boris Spassky

10. "Whatever he says, let his inner resolution be not to bear whatever comes to him, but to bear it 'for a reasonable period'--and let the reasonable period be shorter than the trial is likely to last. It need not be much shorter; in attacks on patience, chastity, and fortitude, the fun is to make the man yield just when (had he but known it) relief was almost in sight."
Author: C.S. Lewis

11. "Ever since he had discovered the rationality of the hrossa he had been haunted by a conscientious scruple as to whether it might not be his duty to undertake their religious instruction; now as a result of his tentative efforts, he found himself being treated as if he were the savage and being given a first sketch of civilized religion-a sort of hrossian equivalent of the shorter catechism."
Author: C.S. Lewis

12. "Interestingly, songs used to be short, then they became longer, and now they're getting shorter."
Author: Casey Kasem

13. "Let'sss just kill him," said the shorter Ra'zac. "He has caused us much grief." The taller one ran his finger down his sword. "A good plan. But remember, the king's instructions were to keep them alive."-from Eragon, Chapter Title: The Ra'zac's Revenge."
Author: Christopher Paolini

14. "Oh- hey, there," he said. He was shorter than me, pudgy with salt-and-pepper hair that always seemed to be in need of a good conditioning. And he always wore sweatpants and T-shirts that had seen more abuse than narcotics. But he was a good landlord. When my heater stopped working in mid-December, it took him only two weeks to get it fixed. Of course, it took me knocking on his door in need of a warm place to sleep to get it that way, but one night on his sofa, where I'd suddenly developed night terrors and epilepsy, and that puppy was running like a Mercedes the next day. It was awesome."
Author: Darynda Jones

15. "The lord works in mysterious ways. Indeed. And a shorter way to say that is:God is a sneak"
Author: Demetri Martin

16. "Jon Stewart is exactly the same guy he's always been, only with money. He knows that the moment he really believes he's important, the funny goes away and he becomes Bill O'Reilly, except shorter and Jewish."
Author: Denis Leary

17. "Give me by all means the shorter and nobler life, instead of onethat is longer but of less account!"
Author: Epictetus

18. "Jodi in tactical gear was something to behold. Pert, a lot shorter than I am, blond hair tucked under a helmet, cinched into body armor never intended to mold to the body of a curvy woman. Ugly but efficient attire. Someone needs to talk to armor designers about female body shapes and style."
Author: Faith Hunter

19. "The finer the bait, the shorter the wait!"
Author: Frank Gorshin

20. "I'm sorry this letter is so long. I didn't have time to make it shorter."
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky

21. "I beg young people to travel. If you don't have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown. Eat interesting food. Dig some interesting people. Have an adventure. Be careful. Come back and you're going to see your country differently, you're going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You're going to get a sense of what globalization looks like. It's not what Tom Friedman writes about; I'm sorry. You're going to see that global climate change is very real. And that for some people, their day consists of walking 12 miles for four buckets of water. And so there are lessons that you can't get out of a book that are waiting for you at the other end of that flight. A lot of people—Americans and Europeans—come back and go, ohhhhh. And the light bulb goes on."
Author: Henry Rollins

22. "Night fell, the first I had spent not embracing a rock, and perhaps for this reason it seemed cruelly shorter to me. The light tended at every moment to erase Ayl, to cast a doubt on her presence, but the darkness restored my certainty she was there."
Author: Italo Calvino

23. "Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter."
Author: Izaak Walton

24. "The exceptions were two men a little ahead of them, standing just outside the Three Broomsticks. One was very tall and thin; squinting through his rain-washed glasses Harry recognized the barman who worked in the other Hogsmeade pub, the Hog's Head. As Harry, Ron, and Hermione drew closer, the barman drew his cloak more tightly around his neck and walked away, leaving the shorter man to fumble with something in his arms. They were barely feet from him when Harry realized who the man was."Mundungus!"
Author: J.K. Rowling

25. "Among the problems with shame was that it in fact did not make you shorter or quieter or less visible. You just felt like you were."
Author: J.R. Ward

26. "A pair of workman's brogans encased my feet, and for trousers I was furnished with a pair of pale blue, washed-out overalls, one leg of which was fully ten inches shorter than the other. The abbreviated leg looked as though the devil had there clutched for the Cockney's soul and missed the shadow for the substance."
Author: Jack London

27. "Thoughts turn to other's just a little more this time of year. Days grow shorter and memories grow longer. Families and friends gather in celebration or hope. Giving is a reflection of our love and caring for each other and those less fortunate. May your thoughts turn to gratitude this holiday season and carry on throughout the next year…"
Author: James A. Murphy

28. "Time, though infinite, is paradoxically also short, and, to be blunt, getting shorter."
Author: James Treadwell

29. "It doesn't seem as if there's that much of a difference between a big production and a little production, other than you have a smaller space in which to get dressed and you have a shorter waiting time."
Author: Jennifer Beals

30. "You know, typically a nickname is shorter than the given name.""Is it?" he asked in mock seriousness. "Oh. Well, tell you what, you can call me…"She waited several beats, thinking of more than a few unkind examples. "I can call you what?" she finally asked."That's it." He shot her his bone-melting smile. "You can just call me. Anytime."She rolled her eyes, refusing to give in to the smile that threatened. "That sounds like a line from one of your movies."He shot her a triumphant look. "Ah, ha! I knew you were a fan."
Author: Jennifer Shirk

31. "Why would you have a work day that does not respond to shorter or longer day length? There's something that we lose, taking our schedules away from that locally relevant rhythm."
Author: Jessa Gamble

32. "I hear what many of you are saying: We don't have the time, we are busy. Well Nobody Has Time, Everyone Is Busy. In the time it took you to read this post, your life just got a minute shorter. That is precisely why we read (and why some of us write): because life is short and finite, we want more, and literature is the distillation of all those lives we will not lead."
Author: Jessica Zafra

33. "Harry lit up, drew the smoke deep into his lungs and tried to imagine the blood vessels in the wall of the lung greedily absorbing the nicotine. Life was becoming shorter and the thought that he would never stop smoking filled him with a strange satisfaction."
Author: Jo Nesbø

34. "Life is like invading Russia. A blitz start, massed shakos, plumes dancing like a flustered henhouse; a period of svelte progress recorded in ebullient despatches as the enemy falls back; then the beginning of a long, morale-sapping trudge with rations getting shorter and the first snowflakes upon your face. The enemy burns Moscow and you yield to General January, whose fingernails are very icicles. Bitter retreat. Harrying Cossacks. Eventually you fall beneath a boy-gunner's grapeshot while crossing some Polish river not even marked on your general's map."
Author: Julian Barnes

35. "I felt emotions overtake me, turning my limbs into water. i felt as if kian had wrapped his whole being around me, so tightly, hugging me tightly with the ends of his soul. i could feel my heart beating quicker, my breath growing shorter as i signed."
Author: Kailin Gow

36. "Bill C-9 was supposed to be a budget bill, but it came with innumerable measures that had little or nothing to do with the nation's finances. It was, as critics put it, the advance of the Harper agenda by stealth, yet another abuse of the democratic process. The bill was a behemoth. It was 904 pages, with 23 separate sections and 2,208 individual clauses....As a Reform MP, [Stephen Harper] .... said of one piece of legislation that 'the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.' The bill he referred to was 21 page long -- or 883 pages shorter than the one he was now putting before Parliament."
Author: Lawrence Martin

37. "In general, shorter is better. If you can encapsulate your idea into a single captivating sentence, you're halfway home."
Author: Len Wein

38. "The only institution in the Sicilian conscience that really counts is the family; counts, that is to say, more as a dramatic juridical contract or bond than as a natural association based on affection. The family is the Sicilians' State. The State, as it is for us, is extraneous to them, merely a de facto entity based on force; an entity imposing taxes, military service, war, police. Within the family institution the Sicilian can cross the frontier of his own natural tragic solitude and fit into a communal life where relationships are governed by hair-splitting contractual ties. To ask him to cross the frontier between family and State would be too much. In imagination he may be carried away by the idea of the State and may even rise to being Prime Minister; but the precise and definite code of his rights and duties will remain within the family, whence the step towards victorious solitude is shorter."
Author: Leonardo Sciascia

39. "Raft told me how to walk with him in a scene: We'd start off in a long shot normal, and about the time we got together in a close-up, I'd be bending my knees so I'd be shorter."
Author: Marie Windsor

40. "I thought it was time to get a group together and the first person I thought of was Wayne Shorter. I called Wayne and in the meantime, Wayne called me to make an album with him, which was Super Nova."
Author: Miroslav Vitous

41. "I am Orafoura, but you can call me Jarod Kintz. I'm fairly proud to proclaim that Dora J. Arod has me on her short list of "World's worst writers." The list couldn't get any shorter, because I'm the only name on it. I should tell her to stop calling it a list, and change the title to "World's worst writer." If you're wondering why I rate all my work one star, it's because the rating system doesn't have a zero star option, or better yet, go into negative numbers."
Author: Orafoura

42. "If the childhood obesity epidemic remains unchecked, it will condemn many of our kids to shorter lives, as well as the emotional and financial burdens of poor health."
Author: Richard Carmona

43. "I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written."
Author: Saul Williams

44. "Elizabeth."I feel my smile on my face as I understand what she is doing. Though it's a strange one, she has a name-sound just like I do, and she's telling me what it is. I try to make the same sounds."Ehh..beh." I frown. Why is her name-sound so difficult and so long?She frowns right back at me and says it again. "Elizabeth.""Beh-tah-babaa."She sighs and her forehead wrinkles. "Elizabeth. Eeee-lizzzz-ahh-beth.""Laahh...baaay."She taps her chest again."Beth!"The sound is shorter but still very odd."Beh-bet.""Beth," she repeats.I've had enough. I reach out and touch her should."Beh.""Beth." I tap her a little harder and growl."Beh", I repeat. I tap her again. "BEH!"Her eyes widen a bit, and she inhales sharply. A moment later, her shoulders drop and she sighs."Beh," she says quietly."
Author: Shay Savage

45. "Don't be the guy that sat spouting how greatly succesful he was to a random stranger at the airport only to find out later that random stranger was a self-made multibillinaire. OR, in shorter words...if you toot your horn too loud, you won't hear the freight train coming down the track."
Author: Shelley K. Wall

46. "I even believe in helping an employer function more productively. For then, we will have a claim to higher wages, shorter hours, and greater participation in the benefits of running a smooth industrial machine."
Author: Sidney Hillman

47. "The essay is one of my favourite forms of writing, and I feel like what's inside is really personal, more so than with shorter pieces."
Author: Stephanie Pearl McPhee

48. "We might not want to share our food or our money, but we do want to share our judgement. We want others to think we have more fun.But we need meeting-places of the mind. A Kilimanjaro of spirit that we've all visited so we can say of other things: it's shorter, or taller, or the same height as Kilimanjaro."
Author: Tibor Fischer

49. "We are at our best when we love the Lord and his church more than our style of life. We do not believe in our country, right or wrong. If evil has such a grip upon the institutions of government, we know that evil must be overthrown by one means or another. We are not monarchists, republicans or socialists, although our membership includes them all and more. We are pilgrims, who want to pass through a land that will support our journey to the Kingdom; and, if need be, the noblest of us will choose to occupy that land for a bit shorter time than usual rather than deny the Lord of the Kingdom."
Author: Urban T. Holmes III

50. "Some hugs were awkward. One person's arm headed over the other's shoulder just as that person was mirroring the action. So it would almost look like a defensive karate move in slow motion. Sometimes, a guy liked to hug around the waist and if the girl was shorter, he'd straighten a little and she'd end up on tip toe. This had always made her feel like a melon being weighed for juiciness. From the wrong man, from any man really, it was a creepy hug.Other hugs were comfortable, a perfect synchronization of arms crisscrossing around one another's backs, a full, warm, brief embrace that said "I care about you" but didn't cross any weird lines."
Author: Victoria Kahler

Shorter Quotes Pictures