I think maybe short stories operate in some of the same ways that poems do. They frame single or small moments and elevate those. They give you insight into more minor dramas maybe, dramas between smaller groups of people.

I'm a little hesitant to make my characters sentimental or to risk having the work labeled sentimental. It's something that I resist as a reader, and I don't resist it in life. I'm not an unmoved person by any stretch, but I think I don't want, I guess, to indulge those kinds of things sometimes in fiction. I can't tell you why exactly.

I often think of the novel as a form that celebrates social groups, and the short story being a form that is capable of celebrating an individual or a sort of insular little pair of people.

Antonya Nelson Quotes