One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation,… — 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. — 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
It is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them - in which case, if you don't… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s sufferings and not your own. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. — 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
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
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
On the subject of the feminist business, I just never think...of qualities which are specifically feminine or masculine. I suppose I divide… — 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
But learned people can analyze for me why I fear hell and their implication is that there is no hell. But I… — 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
All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most… — 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
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
“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
