Flannery O'Connor Quotes
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There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it; and it's well to remember that the serious fiction writer always writes about the whole world.
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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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The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have to get it in your blood, not in the head.
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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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It was not right to believe anything you couldn't see or hold in your hands or test with your teeth.
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The reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.
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I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.
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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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It's easier to bleed than sweat, Mr. Motes.
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As for the blood and the head business, the blood and the head work together and what is not first in the blood can sometimes reach it by going first through the head and what is wrong in the blood can sometimes be tempered by the head.
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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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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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A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.
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In yourself right now is all the place you've got.
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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 only way to the truth is through blasphemy.
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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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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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Most of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow.
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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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If you're a Catholic you believe what the Church teaches and the climate makes no difference.
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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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So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence.
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The meaning of the story is the story.