... the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
You get a real person down there and his talking will take care of itself. — 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
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 is initially set going by literature more than by life. — 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
I suppose half of writing is overcoming the revulsion you feel when you sit down to it. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“Someone once told the Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor that it is more open-minded to think that the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar… — 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
Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.… — 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
... 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
...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 must write down that I am to be an artist. Not in the sense of aesthetic frippery but in the sense… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“I don’t believe in classes where students criticize each other’s manuscripts. Such criticism is generally composed in equal parts of ignorance, flattery,… — 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
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
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 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
Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You… — 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
As for the blood and the head business, the blood and the head work together and what is not first in the… — 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
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
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
When using dialect, use it lightly. A dialect word here and there is enough. All you want to do is suggest. Never… — 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 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
“A perception is not a story, and no amount of sensitivity can make a story-writer out of you if you just plain… — 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
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
“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
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
“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
... 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
“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
“For the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction.” — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“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
“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
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
“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
“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
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
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
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
“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
