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
In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable… — 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
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
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
“Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn't stifle enough of them.” — 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
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
“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
I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. — 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 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
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
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
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
I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing… — 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
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 Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the… — 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
“Symbols are something [the writer] uses simply as a matter of course. You might say that theses are details that, while having… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Writing is like giving birth to a piano sideways. Anyone who perseveres is either talented or nuts. — 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
“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
