I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home 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
The problem of the novelist who wishes to write about a man's encounter with God is how he shall make the experience--which… — 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
“The reader may not see [these meanings], but they have their effect on him nonetheless. This is the way the modern novelist… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
the writer is initially set going by literature more than by life. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“Week before last I went to Wesleyan and read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” After it I went to one… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be… — 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 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
Harcourt sent my book to Evelyn Waugh and his comment was: “If this is really the unaided work of a young lady,… — 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
