Flannery O'Connor Quotes
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Behind the newspaper Julian was withdrawing into the inner compartment of his mind where he spent most of his time. This was a kind of mental bubble in which he established himself when he could not bear to be a part of what was going on around him. From it he could see out and judge but in it he was safe from any kind of penetration from without. It was the only place where he felt free of the general idiocy of his fellows. His mother had never entered it but from it he could see her with absolute clarity.
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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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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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Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.
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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 is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them - in which case, if you don't watch out, they cease to be adversaries.
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I love a lot of people, understand none of them.
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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 would of been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.
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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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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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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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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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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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Success means being heard and don't stand there and tell me that you are indifferent to being heard. You may write for the joy of it, but the act of writing is not complete in itself. It has to end in its audience.
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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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Southern culture has fostered a type of imagination that has been influenced by Christianity of a not too unorthodox kind and by a strong devotion to the Bible, which has kept our minds attached to the concrete and the living symbol.
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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.
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I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway, less burdened.
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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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The Catholic novelist in the South will see many distorted images of Christ, but he will certainly feel that a distorted image of Christ is better than no image at all. I think he will feel a good deal more kinship with backwoods prophets and shouting fundamentalists than he will with those politer elements for whom the supernatural is an embarrassment and for whom religion has become a department of sociology or culture or personality development.
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A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.