“What is needed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writing class.” — 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
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
I never understand how writers can succumb to vanity - what you work the hardest on is usually the worst. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I spend three hours a day writing and the rest of my day getting over it. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say. — 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
...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
It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Writing is a good example of self-abandonment. I never completely forget myself except when I am writing and I am never more… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I am very much afraid that to the fiction writer the fact that we shall always have the poor with us is… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Success means being heard and don't stand there and tell me that you are indifferent to being heard. You may write for… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“Art requires a delicate adjustment of the outer and inner worlds in such a way that, without changing their nature, they can… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be… — 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,… — 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
Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners 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
I'm a full-time believer in writing habits...You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us… — 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
“Writing this, he had reached the pit of despair and he thought that reading it, she would at least begin to sense… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Poorly written novels--no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters--are not good in themselves and are therefore not really… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where the human perception begins. He appeals through… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location. — 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
I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I… — 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
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
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
“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
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
“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
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
... Simone Weil is a mystery that should keep us all humble, and I need it more than most. Also she's the… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still… — 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 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
“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
