Flannery O'Connor Quotes
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In yourself right now is all the place you've got.
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In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery.
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Most of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow.
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I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear.
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The mind serves best when it's anchored in the Word of God. There is no danger then of becoming an intellectual without integrity.
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I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.
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Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
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There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.
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I will rejoice the day when they say: This is right whether we all rot on top of each other or not, dear children, as we certainly may. Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding.
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The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself.
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It's easier to bleed than sweat, Mr. Motes.
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On the subject of the feminist business, I just never think...of qualities which are specifically feminine or masculine. I suppose I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non-Irksome without regard to sex. Yes and there are the Medium Irksome and the Rare Irksome.
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When the peacock has presented his back, the spectator will usually begin to walk around him to get a front view; but the peacock will continue to turn so that no front view is possible. The thing to do then is to stand still and wait until it pleases him to turn. When it suits him, the peacock will face you. Then you will see in a green-bronze arch around him a galaxy of gazing, haloed suns.
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When using dialect, use it lightly. A dialect word here and there is enough. All you want to do is suggest. Never let it call attention to itself.
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Nothing needs to happen to a writer’s life after they are 20. By then they’ve experienced more than enough to last their creative life.
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She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything.
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There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.
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Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it
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Even a child with normal feet was in love with the world after he had got a new pair of shoes.
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So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence.
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If you're a Catholic you believe what the Church teaches and the climate makes no difference.
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I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.
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A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.
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Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are.