The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself. Flannery O'Connor More Quotes by Flannery O'Connor More Quotes From Flannery O'Connor I have enough energy to write with and as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing. Flannery O'Connor eyeblessingwriting He knew that he was the stuff of which fanatics and madmen are made and that he had turned his destiny as if with his bare will. He kept himself upright on a very narrow line between madness and emptiness and when the time came for him to lose his balance he intended to lurch toward emptiness and fall on the side of his choice. Flannery O'Connor destinychoicesfall Purity strikes me as the most mysterious of the virtues and the more I think about it the less I know about it. Flannery O'Connor mysterioushappinessthinking 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 techniquewritingtalking The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot. Flannery O'Connor childhoodinformationlittles There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin. Flannery O'Connor blackwayjesus I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. Flannery O'Connor storieswritingpeople 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. Flannery O'Connor no-excuseswritingfiction The two worst sins of bad taste in fiction are pornography and sentimentality. One is too much sex and the other too much sentiment. Flannery O'Connor twosexfiction 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. Flannery O'Connor storiessaidway All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal. Flannery O'Connor characterpeoplethinking Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character. Flannery O'Connor writingcharacterideas Woman! Do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God! Flannery O'Connor looks I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up. Flannery O'Connor tiredhomeheart There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells. Flannery O'Connor runninglongpeople I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth. Flannery O'Connor atheismliteraturetruth The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky. Flannery O'Connor starsskymoving The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at truth. Flannery O'Connor distortiontruth-isused Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it. Flannery O'Connor symbolshellwells I'm a member and preacher to that church where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way. Flannery O'Connor lamechurchway
