« All Writing Quotes · Flannery O'Connor's Page
Writing Quotes by Flannery O'Connor
- I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing a conventional novel,…
- I have also led you astray by talking of technique as if it were something that could be separated from the rest of the story.…
- When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others,…
- The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have to get it…
- As for the blood and the head business, the blood and the head work together and what is not first in the blood can sometimes…
- When using dialect, use it lightly. A dialect word here and there is enough. All you want to do is suggest. Never let it call…
- You get a real person down there and his talking will take care of itself.
- Technique in the minds of many is something rigid, something like a formula that you impose on the material; but in the best stories it…
- 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 anything you can…
- It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object they actually see.
- I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested in publishing something,…
- Far be it for me to have worked it out in any abstract way. I don't know why the bull and Mrs. May have to…
- One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present reality…
- It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing cells…
- 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 only have talent…
- There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be…
- If there is no possibility for change in a character, we have no interest in him.
- I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.
- 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 where…
- A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say…
More Writing Quotes
- Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. — Hannah Arendt
- I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when… — Margaret Atwood
- I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was… — Paul Auster
- I grew up in a working-class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know. — Andrea Arnold
- I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don't hurt me, because it is me. If it was not… — Paulo Coelho
- Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn't write, I would stop breathing. — Paul Auster
- In every song I write, whether it's a love song or a political song or a song about family, the one thing… — Billie Joe Armstrong
- Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core… — Isaac Asimov