Flannery O'Connor - People Quotes

13 Sourced Quotes

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I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.

Flannery O'Connor
So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence.

Flannery O'Connor
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
I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.

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

Flannery O'Connor
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
It is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them — in which case, if you don't watch out, they cease to be adversaries.

Flannery O'Connor
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
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
What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.

Flannery O'Connor
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
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
It is always difficult to get across to people who are not professional writers that a talent to write does not mean a talent to write anything at all.

Flannery O'Connor