Flannery O'Connor Quotes
A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.
Quotes to Explore
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I see no reason to hide who I am or what I look like.
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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.
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Traveling is one expression of the desire to cross boundaries.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If you look at the scientists who really make a difference, they think boldly. They're not afraid to question what they see.
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I really, really loved making 'This Is My Life' and 'Now and Then.'
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Although some secrecy is odious, some is essential just to preserve our sense of self.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
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Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.
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I don't know if I'm a tortured soul, but I was born heartbroken. I remember feeling it when I was so young. I was like, 'Mum, it hurts.'
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It's really important to visit a site you are writing about. Even if you know it well, even if you have lived there, it's important to take a fresh look in terms of your characters and your story.
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When you truly know the meaning of the word love, you will also know the meaning of the word pain.
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I do write fiction, and I find it more difficult, but also more liberating. On the one hand, you can make up the story, but you have to make up the story.
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As far as dramas are concerned, it's considered passe for playwrights to turn out anything the average person can understand.
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A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.
