Flannery O'Connor Quotes

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

okay, so that one's not very reassuring for a NaNoWriMo participant. But, hell. If I write five years worth of crappy novellas before I end up with a sixth year's effort that can be refined into something good... then that's good enough!

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

...yeah, that one's not any better. But it's amusing.

Less Grim Flannery O'Connor Quotes

The writer, in order best to use the talents he has been given, has to write at his own intellectual level. For him to do anything else is to bury his talents. This doesn't mean that, within his limitations, he shouldn't try to reach as many people as possible, but it does mean that he must not lower his standards to do so.

The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal to the senses with abstractions.

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.

The problem of the novelist who wishes to write about a man's encounter with God is how he shall make the experience -- which is both natural and supernatural -- understandable, and credible, to his reader. In any age this would be a problem, but in our own, it is a well-nigh insurmountable one. Today's audience is one in which religious feeling has become, if not atrophied, at least vaporous and sentimental.

The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees.

When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God.