Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Most of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow. — 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
...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. — 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
Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has… — 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
Every morning between 9 and 12 I go to my room and sit before a piece of paper. Many times, I just… — 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
I believe the teacher's work is largely negative, that it is largely a matter of saying, "This doesn't work because ..." or… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I doubt if the texture of Southern life is any more grotesque than that of the rest of the nation, but it… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason… — 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
