Flannery O'Connor Quotes - Page 9

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• Elizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Firsts, Chickens, Mines

  5 Copy quote

• The idea of being a writer attracts a good many shiftless people, those who are merely burdened with poetic feelings or afflicted with sensibility.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Ideas, People, Feelings

  Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose "The Nature and Aims of Fiction" (1969)

  6 Copy quote

• When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathe News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been anticlimax.

  Flannery O'Connor

  News, Six, Chickens

  Flannery O'Connor, Rosemary M. Magee (1987). “Conversations with Flannery O'Connor”, p.38, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Father, Gone, Rooms

  Flannery O'Connor (1971). “The Complete Stories”, p.361, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Thinking, Doctors, Patient

  5 Copy quote

• In my travels I am often asked if college stifles young writers. In my opinion, it doesn't stifle them enough.

  Flannery O'Connor

  College, Young Writers, Opinion

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Southern, Doubt

  Flannery O'Connor (1965). “Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories”, p.23, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• Faith has to take in all the other possibilities it can.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Possibility

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.231, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• The meaning of the story is the story.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Stories

  4 Copy quote

• Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Jesus, Voice, House

  4 Copy quote

• Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Southern, Realistic, Grotesque

  "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction" (1960)

  8 Copy quote

• Good and evil appear to be joined in every culture at the spine.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Evil, Culture, Good And Evil

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.200, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

• Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.

  Flannery O'Connor

  People, Quality, Use

  Flannery O'Connor (2016). “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, p.116, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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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• 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

  4 Copy quote

• The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Art, Matter, Art Is

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.65, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• That's the trouble with you preachers," he said. "You've all got too good to believe in anything," and he drove off with a look of disgust and righteousness.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, Looks, Trouble

  Flannery O'Connor (2007). “Wise Blood: A Novel”, p.28, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• He knew something was going to happen and his entire system was waiting on it. He thought it was going to be one of the supreme moments in life but apart from that, he didn't have the vaguest notion what it might be. He pictured himself, after it was over, as an entirely new man, with an even better personality than he had now. He sat there for about fifteen minutes and nothing happened.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Men, Personality, Waiting

  Flannery O'Connor (1983). “Three by Flannery O'Connor: Wise blood, The violent bear it away, Everything that rises must converge”, Signet Classics

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• ... the novelist is bound by the reasonable possibilities, not the probabilities, of his culture.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Novelists, Culture, Possibility

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.164, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• She felt that she would have to be much more than just a doctor or an engineer. She would have to be a saint.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Doctors, Saint, Engineers

  Flannery O'Connor (2016). “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, p.64, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• 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

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• Kindness and patience were always called for.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Kindness, Kindness And Patience

  Flannery O'Connor (1971). “The Complete Stories”, p.464, Macmillan

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• I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested in publishing something, and if possible in making a "killing." They are interested in being a writer not in writing. . . If this is what you are interested in, I am not going to be much use to you.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, People, Use

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.64, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Jesus, Black, Way

  Flannery O'Connor (2015). “Wise Blood”, p.18, Faber & Faber

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