Flannery O'Connor Quotes
I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.
Quotes to Explore
-
I'm a very good thinker, but I sometimes grab the wrong word. I say something I didn't think through adequately. I mean, I don't type my speeches, then sit up there and read them off the teleprompter, you know. I wing it.
-
Let us not be so naive as to think that revolution is just a matter of social or economic discontent.
-
This is part of what's driving me, is this feeling like there's so much yet to be discovered in the oceans, and we're destroying it before we even know what's in it.
-
There's always going to be a little bit of autobiographical content to everything. It's how you lend some authority to what you write - you give it that weight by drawing on your direct experiences and indirect experiences from people that you know well, or a little.
-
I've got nothing very original to say myself.
-
The reason I don't carry a mobile phone is I don't want people to know where I am!
-
I'm proud to say I've never been anybody's lapdog.
-
Life histories tell you just about everything you need to know about an animal.
-
I am a being of Heaven and Earth, of thunder and lightning, of rain and wind, of the galaxies.
-
Women have to be active listeners and interrupters - but when you interrupt, you have to know what you are talking about.
-
I like to put a stake in people, because I know people helped me.
-
Readers of novels often fall into the bad habit of being overly exacting about the characters' moral flaws. They apply to these fictional beings standards that no one they know in real life could possibly meet.
-
Most artists like to think of themselves as rugged individualists, as independent characters.
-
Know or listen to those who know.
-
I think the thing that I get most excited about is the fact that I know I'm gonna have a great match. That's when I get the butterflies. When it's just a regular match or something like that, I may not get that.
-
At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.
-
I know what I've done, and I know who I am.
-
Probably Romania and China and Russia. I think they're all working really hard to beat us right now.
-
But I notice that there is a lack of darkness in my movies and I don't know where that comes from.
-
My career? I never think of it as a 'career.' Art and music and all those things that I'm creating are just part of me.
-
I used to think that the Civil War was our country's greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate.
-
Entrepreneurs have only the murkiest picture of the future in which they are making their bets, and also there is ambiguity: they don't know when they push this lever or that lever that the outcome is going to be what they think it is going to be - there is the law of unanticipated consequences.
-
Theatre is done largely for the love of the craft. Television makes you famous. And films immortalize you. That's the relationship between the three.
-
I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.
