At first he had been able to work only in painfully short bursts - fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour if the story really demanded it of him.

The game was perceived as "painfully short" and "linear", but "never boring".

But with new information in painfully short supply today, for many there was little to do but vent emotions.

After all, their affair had been a painfully short one, though it was wonderful while it lasted.

He was a nail-biter, she thought, staring with dull fascination at his ragged, painfully short fingernails.

After all, the life span of drama in the Bronx these days is painfully short.

He'd shorn his wiry ginger-and-gray mop painfully short while he'd been gone.

No, not long, a painfully short time to leave a beloved wife.

Raymond drops me off with Paul, a thick-armed blond guy who is, compared with Roberta, painfully short of people skills.