Flannery O'Connor Quotes
Writing is a good example of self-abandonment. I never completely forget myself except when I am writing and I am never more completely myself than when I am writing.
Quotes to Explore
-
It is hard to watch myself. I'm hypercritical, and it's difficult to watch a performance when I may end up being at odds with it - wishing I'd done something differently or that they had edited it a certain way.
-
I'm French - it's less important. Meaning, I remain a Frenchman in America, but I adapt to American culture. I feel good there - but I'm still a foreigner.
-
Writing requires the concentration of the writer, demands that nothing else be done except that.
-
If a remake is not good, no one wants to see it and, again, it doesn't hurt the original.
-
When I'm home on a break, I lock myself in my room and play guitar. After two or three hours, I start getting into this total meditation. It's a feeling few people experience, and that's usually when I come up with weird stuff. It just flows. I can't force myself. I don't sit down and say I've got to practice.
-
Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world.
-
When you're heartbroken, you're at your most creative - you have to channel all your energies into something else to not think about it. Contentment is a creativity killer, but don't worry - I'm very capable of making myself discontented.
-
When I stopped seeing my mother through the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself.
-
However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously.
-
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.
-
I was so nervous because I was doing my first film. I didn't want to embarrass myself. I'm an incredibly insecure person, and knowing that I had to go on set in next to nothing, it scared me, but at the same time, I knew it would be a challenge to open me up, not only as an actress but as a person.
-
I put a lot of pressure on myself. I think something's not good enough, and I won't stop until I feel like I've made it. I'm never satisfied.
-
It's much funnier when the comedy can happen with me just trying my best to genuinely do a good thing.
-
The secrecy thing has gotten to be more and more prevalent in films, and maybe that's good. It's nice to go see a film and not know anything about it. Sometimes I feel like we know too much about films.
-
I've been blessed with pretty strong stamina and healthy genes, so I'd call myself sensible. I've had regular mammograms ever since I found a lump in my breast when I was 30. Thankfully, all was well.
-
I feel I have to protect myself against things. So I'm pretty careful to lose most of them.
-
I'm a writer who simply can't know what I'm writing about until the writing lets me discover it. In a sense, my writing process embraces the gapped nature of my memory process, leaping across spaces that represent all I've lost and establishing fresh patterns within all that remains.
-
My blood runs cold when I hear the 'great news' that we have found a marker for the Down's syndrome gene, which means we can identify it more easily. Why is that good news? It's only good news if you're going to terminate.
-
I know I can't eat whatever I want and look the way I want, so you need to work for it. I give credit to Pilates and my parents' good genes.
-
Jewelry and pins have been worn throughout history as symbols of power, sending messages. Interestingly enough, it was mostly men who wore the jewelry in various times, and obviously crowns were part of signals that were being sent throughout history by people of rank.
-
I always dreamed of being Maria in The Sound of Music.
-
'Priced to sell' - just the phrase makes me smile. When a dealer says all the items in his booth are priced to sell, he means he's tagged them as aggressively as he can to get you to buy them. Don't worry, though, I still haggle. You have to. That's the point of a flea market.
-
The history of art is the history of revivals.
-
Writing is a good example of self-abandonment. I never completely forget myself except when I am writing and I am never more completely myself than when I am writing.
