Flannery O'Connor Quotes
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I doubt if the texture of Southern life is any more grotesque than that of the rest of the nation, but it does seem evident that the Southern writer is particularly adept at recognizing the grotesque; and to recognize the grotesque, you have to have some notion of what is not grotesque and why.
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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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I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.
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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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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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In yourself right now is all the place you've got.
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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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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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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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A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.
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The reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.
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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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The only way to the truth is through blasphemy.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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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.