People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
You can't clobber any reader while he's looking. You divert his attention, then you clobber him and he never knows what hit… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive,… — 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
I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“The novelist makes his statements by selection, and if he is any good, he selects every word for a reason, every detail… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take… — 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
The Bible was the only book he read. He didn't read it often but when he did he wore his mother's glasses.… — 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
I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say. — 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
“Do you have any books the faculty doesn't particularly recommend?” — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“I don’t have a lot of time. I can give a poem a couple of lines, a short story a paragraph, and… — 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
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
“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
Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
When we look at a good deal of serious modern fiction, and particularly Southern fiction, we find this quality about it that… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would… — 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 have 50 or 60 pages on the [new] novel but I still expect to be a long time at it. It’s… — 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
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. — 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 Image
... 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 Image
“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 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
To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
