冰心 -《话说短文》
也许是我的精、气、神都不足吧，不但自己写不出长的东西，我读一本刊物时，也总是先挑短的看，不论是小说、散文或是其他的文学形式，最后才看长的。
Maybe it is because of my lack of energy that I am not able to write long articles. It’s the same in terms of reading magazines. I prefer to read short ones first and longer ones in the end, whether they are fiction, essays or other kinds of literature.
我总觉得，凡是为了非倾吐不可而写的作品，都是充满了真情实感的。反之，只是为写作而写作，如上之为应付编辑朋友，下之为多拿稿费，这类文章大都是尽量地往长里写，结果是即便有一点点的感情，也被冲洗到水分太多、淡而无味的地步。
I always believe that works written to express are full of real emotions and feelings. On the opposite, works written for getting passed by editors and getting more payment are often very long. As a result, even if these works contain a bit of emotions, they are diluted with tedious words.
当由一个人物，一桩事迹，一幅画面而发生的真情实感，向你袭来的时候，它就像一根扎到你心尖上的长针，一阵卷到你面前的怒潮，你只能用最真切、最简练的文字，才能描画出你心尖上的那一阵剧痛和你面前的那一霎惊惶!
Emotions triggered by a person, a story and a picture scene are like needles sticked into your heart and rolling waves rushing toward you. These emotions can only be described by the most concise words from the bottom of your heart.
我们伟大的祖国，是有写短文的文学传统的。那部包括上下数千年的《古文观止》，“上起东周，下迄明末，共选辑文章220篇”，有几篇是长的?如杜牧的《阿房宫赋》，韩愈的《祭十二郎文》等等，哪一篇不是短而充满了真情实感?今人的巴金的《随感录》，不也是一个实例吗?
Our country has the tradition of writing short articles. The Finest of Ancient Prose collected selected 220 articles from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty to the late Ming Dynasty, within a time span of thousands of years. Few of them are long. Articles are all short but full of real emotions, such as Du Mu’s On the Ah Fang Palace and Han Yu’s An Elegiac Address to the Twelfth Nephew. As for articles nowadays, Ba Jin’s Random Thoughts is a good example.