Flannery O'Connor Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Southern, Able

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.44, Macmillan

• The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Teacher, Writing, School

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.140, Macmillan

• I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Reading, Writing, Grace

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.118, Macmillan

• There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fall, Writing, Stories

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.48, Macmillan

• It's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Fiction, Get Away

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.76, Macmillan

• People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Long, People

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.78, Macmillan

• A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell them to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Would Be, Fiction

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.96, Macmillan

• One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present reality is the Incarnation, and nobody believes in the Incarnation; that is, nobody in your audience. My audience are the people who think God is dead. At least these are the people I am conscious of writing for.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Believe, Writing

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.92, Macmillan

• Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Character, Ideas

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.363, Macmillan

• ... Simone Weil is a mystery that should keep us all humble, and I need it more than most. Also she's the example of the religious consciousness without a religion which maybe sooner or later I will be able to write about.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Religious, Writing, Humble

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “Collected Works”, New York, NY : Library of America : Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by Viking Press

• I feel that discussing story-writing in terms of plot, character, and theme is like trying to describe the expression on a face by saying where the eyes, nose, and mouth are.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Character, Eye, Writing

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.89, Macmillan

• I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing a conventional novel, and I think that the quality of the novel I write will derive precisely from the peculiarity or aloneness, if you will, of the experience I write from.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Thinking, Quality

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.10, Macmillan

• Far be it for me to have worked it out in any abstract way. I don't know why the bull and Mrs. May have to die, or why Mr. Fortune and Mary Fortune: I just feel in my bones that that is the way it has to be. If I had the abstraction first I don't suppose I would write the story.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Empathy, Apathy

• If there is no possibility for change in a character, we have no interest in him.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Character, Possibility

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.199, Macmillan

• Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Fall, Writing

• I write to discover what I know.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Knows

• When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.143, Macmillan

• 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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Self, Blood

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.518, Macmillan

• People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, People, Novel

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.78, Macmillan

• 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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Blood, Working Together

• 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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Here And There, Attention

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.301, Macmillan

• You get a real person down there and his talking will take care of itself.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Real, Writing, Talking

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.301, Macmillan

• Technique in the minds of many is something rigid, something like a formula that you impose on the material; but in the best stories it is something organic, something that grows out of the material, and this being the case, it is different for every story of any account that has ever been written.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Mind, Technique

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.67, Macmillan

• I have also led you astray by talking of technique as if it were something that could be separated from the rest of the story. Technique can't operate at all, of course, except on believable material.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Talking, Technique

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.171, Macmillan

• It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object they actually see.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Ideas, People

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.67, Macmillan

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