Flannery O'Connor Quotes
I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up.
Quotes to Explore
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Any creative process comes with a level of self-analysis and self-criticism. There's a lot of waking up in the middle of the night going, 'Oh, I wish I had done that differently.'
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I try to get going early, on the assumption that the way you begin your day is the way you continue. But certain books only want to be written at night, so there's no hard rule where work is concerned.
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At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Christmas story. A young mother and a dutiful father with their baby were joined by poor shepherds and visitors from afar. They came with their gifts to worship the Christ child.
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My mom just understands about stuff. We have a really good trust, and she knows I can take care of myself.
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Growing up, there were no families on TV that looked like mine.
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My mom started working at the California Shakespeare Theater in Oakland when I was two years old, so I've always grown up around theater.
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I was at our beautiful home in Martha's Vineyard, near Boston, sitting on the porch looking at the ocean when I got a phone called and was asked, 'Would I like to do 'CSI'?' A week later, I'm at a coroner's office in Las Vegas, participating in a quadruple autopsy.
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I'm now happily remarried to a good cook, which encourages me to be lazy. I like to think that I'm a new man, but perhaps I'm not. I offset it by doing the ironing, though. She has a small farm in the New Forest with a herd of cattle, so she serves up a steak and kidney pie made with her own beef.
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I feel like I've grown up on screen quite a lot.
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I'm planning to be here forever, but I know at some point I'll probably have to give it up. If you live to 100, there's a very good chance you'll live forever. Because very few people die after 100.
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We're certainly not in position to expand into the East. We've been very candid and up front that if, in fact, we go through an expansion process, the world will know about it.
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I'm being mocked because I don't live up to a socially determined view of what other people think a person should look like.
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Rock was always part of my heart and soul. But the times just changed and everybody wanted to dance.
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I was just as voracious a writer as I was a reader.
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What do you think will happen in a forced marriage? With an uneducated man, an animal. What would I say, that I am already married? Why would I say it? I never accepted him as my husband in my heart or mind. How I spent a year and a half with him, only I know. And I only did it because of the child.
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There are so many bad influences out there. I don't care if a kid is rich or poor, if he lives in a million-dollar house or the ghetto, he is going to find some sick things on the street. And if we don't clean it up soon, we're all going to pay the price.
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We all wake up, and I'm sure at some point during the day we all have very similar thoughts regardless of our circumstances and where we are in the world.
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Spirituality is a growth industry. And nothing illustrates that better than the burgeoning crop of colossal sanctuaries sprouting up in suburbs across the land.
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I had tried to get focused on other things. But I always ended up back in the same place, and it wasn't making me happy. I needed to get the focus back.
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Some people have an ability to negotiate. It's an art you're basically born with. You either have it or you don't.
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The lasting value of our public service for God is measured by the depth of the intimacy of our private times of fellowship and oneness with Him.
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My faith is with me always.
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If you're part of any kind of writerly community, some of those people will have gone through MFA programs, and their thinking leaks into yours. So whatever changes MFAs have made to the culture, it's to the culture as a whole. It can't be pinned down to individual books in a way that some people would like to do.
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I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up.
