Flannery O'Connor Quotes

A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.

Flannery O'Connor

• Story
• Meaning
• Muscle

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Quotes to Explore

• I see no reason to hide who I am or what I look like.

  

  Lara St. John
  • Look
  • Hide

• There's a critic that I love, Manohla Dargis of the 'L.A. Weekly.' I like the underground point of view; it's my old radical sympathies. Maybe I like her because she likes my movies.

  

  Harold Ramis
  • Like
  • Radical
  • Critic

• Traveling is one expression of the desire to cross boundaries.

  

  A. B. Yehoshua
  • Desire
  • Boundaries

• I do all of my good thinking at over 65 miles per hour. The speed limit is, luckily, the same speed as my brainstorming speed.

  

  Maggie Stiefvater
  • Good
  • Thinking
  • Same

• God gave us faculties for our use; each of them will receive its proper reward. Then do not let us try to charm them to sleep, but permit them to do their work until divinely called to something higher.

  

  Saint Teresa of Avila
  • Work
  • God
  • Sleep

• There is always shame in the creation of an expressive work, whether it's a book or a clay pot. Every artist worries about how they will be seen by others through their work. When you create, you aspire to do justice to yourself, to remake yourself, and there is always the fear that you will expose the very thing that you hoped to transform.

  

  Rachel Cusk
  • Work
  • Book
  • Fear

• If you look at the scientists who really make a difference, they think boldly. They're not afraid to question what they see.

  

  Taylor Wilson
  • Question
  • Look
  • Make A Difference

• I really, really loved making 'This Is My Life' and 'Now and Then.'

  

  Gaby Hoffmann
  • Life
  • My Life
  • Now And Then

• Although some secrecy is odious, some is essential just to preserve our sense of self.

  

  Ian Hacking
  • Self
  • Just
  • Some

• I tour with a piano, actually. Luckily I am able to hire people that deal with it completely and magically a piano appears on stage and then magically disappears when I leave.

  

  Vanessa Carlton
  • People
  • Piano
  • Tour

• The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us.

  

  Sam Harris
  • World
  • Facts
  • Argument

• We take people to the threshold of religion. Our aim is to induce immediate experience that is beyond the odd, beyond the strange, and beyond the weird. It verges on the wholly other.

  

  Larry Harvey
  • People
  • Experience
  • Religion

• I would play my Dungeons and Dragons songs and watch people's eyes glaze over, and then I would start joking around between songs, and all of a sudden people were lighting up and engaging.

  

  J. Tillman
  • People
  • Up
  • Eyes

• In 2007, everything changed with the iPhone. As crippled as that first model now seems, with its lack of apps and glacial cellular connectivity, the iPhone was a practical, useful, self-contained computer a child could understand. It was an information appliance.

  

  Walt Mossberg
  • Child
  • Model
  • Information

• There's only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power.

  

  Frances McDormand
  • Money
  • Power
  • Acting

• Getting elected Governor of New Mexico, I really did enjoy that job. I thought I made a really big difference, and I think the same running for president of the United States - that I could make a really big, positive difference.

  

  Gary Johnson
  • Job
  • Running
  • Positive

• Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.

  

  Mahatma Gandhi
  • Good
  • Evil
  • Cooperation

• Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.

  

  Carl Hiaasen
  • Humor
  • Weapon
  • Incredible

• I had to have my first kiss in front of, like, a hundred people. I didn't know what to do. So my sisters told me to, like, practice on a pillow, you know? But it didn't kiss me back so I didn't know what to expect.

  

  Lacey Chabert
  • People
  • Practice
  • Kiss

• A lot of people have that story that they used to sell crack or shoot people; that's nothing new. But honestly, if that was me, I probably still wouldn't be doing that because it's so many people that's doing that. It just gets old when you hear a million raps about how many ways I could shoot you. So I just try to be more creative and come with something new because I actually care about the music.

  

  Hakeem Seriki
  • People
  • Story
  • Million raps

• Really, life is complicated enough without having a bunch of Senators deciding what we should do in the privacy of our own homes.

  

  Barbara Boxer
  • Life
  • Own
  • Privacy

• Merit is a work for the sake of which Christ gives rewards. But no such work is to be found, for Christ gives by promise. Just as if a prince should say to me, "Come to me in my castle, and I will give you a hundred florins." I do a work, certainly, in going to the castle, but the gift is not given me as the reward of my work in going, but because the prince promised it to me.

  

  Martin Luther
  • Promise
  • Christ
  • Gift

• A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.

  

  Flannery O'Connor
  • Story
  • Meaning
  • Muscle