I never understand how writers can succumb to vanity - what you work the hardest on is usually the worst. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
... the novelist is bound by the reasonable possibilities, not the probabilities, of his culture. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“For the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction.” — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“What is needed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writing class.” — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I write any sort of rubbish which will cover the main outlines of the story, then I can begin to see it. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I spend three hours a day writing and the rest of my day getting over it. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“The novel is a more diffused form and more suited to those who like to linger along the way; it also requires… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Nothing needs to happen to a writer’s life after they are 20. By then they’ve experienced more than enough to last their… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
One old lady who wants her head lifted wouldn't be so bad, but you multiply her two hundred and fifty thousand times… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The idea of being a writer attracts a good many shiftless people, those who are merely burdened with poetic feelings or afflicted… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I have enough energy to write with and as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can with one… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live, and so far… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“People without hope do not write novels … [Writing fiction] is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
There was a time when the average reader read a novel simply for the moral he could get out of it, and… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I don't think you should write something as long as a novel around anything that is not of the gravest concern to… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. Then they find themselves writing… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
the writer is initially set going by literature more than by life. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Writing is like giving birth to a piano sideways. Anyone who perseveres is either talented or nuts. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I suppose half of writing is overcoming the revulsion you feel when you sit down to it. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Being a Georgia author is a rather specious dignity, on the same order as, for the pig, being a Talmadge ham. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“You can choose what you write but you can't choose what you make live.” — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
It is always difficult to get across to people who are not professional writers that a talent to write does not mean… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“Wait here, wait here!" he cried and jumped up and began to run for help toward a cluster of lights he saw in the… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
... the man in the violent situation reveals those qualities least dispensable in his personality, those qualities which are all he will have to… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“I don’t know how to cure the source-itis except to tell you that I can discover a good many possible sources myself for Wise… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“For the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction.” — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“He felt his hunger no longer as a pain but as a tide. He felt it rising in himself through time and darkness, rising… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
Technique in the minds of many is something rigid, something like a formula that you impose on the material; but in the best stories… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“There are all kinds of truth ... but behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.” — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“Mrs. May winced. She thought the word Jesus should be kept inside the church building like other words inside the bedroom.” — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
I feel that discussing story-writing in terms of plot, character, and theme is like trying to describe the expression on a face by saying… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“Hazel Motes sat at a forward angel on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
![“People without hope do not write novels … [Writing fiction] is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system. If the novelist is not sustained by a hope of money, then he must be sustained by a hope of salvation, or he simply won’t survive the ordeal.” quote by Flannery O'Connor](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/225/flannery-o-connor-639_books_people-without-hope-do-not-write-novels_903687.png)
