You ought to be able to discover something from your stories. If you don't, probably nobody else will. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle. — 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
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
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
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
In most good stories, it is the character's personality that creates the action of the story. If you start with real personality,… — 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… — 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… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I am tired of reading reviews that call A Good Man brutal and sarcastic. The stories are hard but they are hard… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I write any sort of rubbish which will cover the main outlines of the story, then I can begin to see it. — 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
When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be… — 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
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
A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the… — 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
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
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
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware… — 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
