...I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think… — 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
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
There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
It's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. You can do… — 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
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
I have enough energy to write with and as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can with one… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the… — 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
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
“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
There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having… — 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
Nothing needs to happen to a writer’s life after they are 20. By then they’ve experienced more than enough to last their… — 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
“I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality… — 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
“The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live, and so far… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't… — 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
She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“Hazel Motes sat at a forward angel on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image