You get a real person down there and his talking will take care of itself. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
... the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life. — 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
The only way, I think, to learn to write short stories is to write them, and then try to discover what you… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn't stifle enough of them.” — 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 know that the writer does call up the general and maybe the essential through the particular, but this general and essential… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls… — 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
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
“Art requires a delicate adjustment of the outer and inner worlds in such a way that, without changing their nature, they can… — 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
Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“Symbols are something [the writer] uses simply as a matter of course. You might say that theses are details that, while having… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Far be it for me to have worked it out in any abstract way. I don't know why the bull and Mrs.… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at… — 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
Poorly written novels--no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters--are not good in themselves and are therefore not really… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Writing is a good example of self-abandonment. I never completely forget myself except when I am writing and I am never more… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I am very much afraid that to the fiction writer the fact that we shall always have the poor with us is… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Success means being heard and don't stand there and tell me that you are indifferent to being heard. You may write for… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I have also led you astray by talking of technique as if it were something that could be separated from the rest… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where the human perception begins. He appeals through… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“If a writer is any good, what he makes will have its source in a realm much larger than that which his… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
It's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. You can do… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
When using dialect, use it lightly. A dialect word here and there is enough. All you want to do is suggest. Never… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“A perception is not a story, and no amount of sensitivity can make a story-writer out of you if you just plain… — 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
![“Symbols are something [the writer] uses simply as a matter of course. You might say that theses are details that, while having their essential place in the literal level of the story, operate in depth as well as on the surface, increasing the story in every direction … the truer the symbol, the…” quote by Flannery O'Connor](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/fe7/flannery-o-connor-639_symbol_symbols-are-something-the-writer-uses-si_1791562.jpg)
