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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 10cce15 | He saw that for the rest of his days, frail, racked, but enduring, he would live in the face of a purifying terror. A feeble cry, a last impossible protest escaped him. But the Holy Ghost, emblazoned in ice instead of fire, continued, implacable, to descend. | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| 0add7f9 | It is generally supposed, and not least by Catholics, that the Catholic who writes fiction is out to use fiction to prove the truth of the Faith, or at the least, to prove the existence of the supernatural. He may be. No one certainly can be sure of his low motives except as they suggest themselves in his finished work, but when the finished work suggests that pertinent actions have been fraudulently manipulated or overlooked or smothered, .. | fiction fiction-writing writing writing-fiction | Flannery O'Connor | |
| e59270f | For nearly two centuries the popular spirit of each succeeding generation has tended more and more to the view that the mysteries of life will eventually fall before the mind of man. Many modern novelists have been more concerned with the processes of consciousness than with the objective world outside the mind. In twentieth-century fiction it increasingly happens that a meaningless, absurd world impinges upon the sacred consciousness of au.. | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| 1be78c5 | I think the writer is initially set going by literature more than by life. When there are many writers all employing the same idiom, all looking out on more or less the same social scene, the individual writer will have to be more than ever careful that he isn't just doing badly what has already been done to completion. The presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to d.. | great-writers imitation literature novelist originality writers | Flannery O'Connor | |
| 180ad12 | In the last twenty years the colleges have been emphasizing creative writing to such an extent that you almost feel that any idiot with a nickel's worth of talent can emerge from a writing class able to write a competent story. In fact, so many people can now write competent stories that the short story as a medium is in danger of dying of competence. We want competence, but competence by itself is deadly. What is needed is the vision to go.. | talent writing writing-class writing-skill writing-talent | Flannery O'Connor | |
| 28c11c8 | 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. | writers-on-writing writing writing-fiction writing-style | Flannery O'Connor | |
| 0d30f47 | Who's there?" the voice from inside said and there was a quality about it now that seemed final. The knob rattled and the voice said peremptorily, "Who's there, I ast you?" Parker bent down and put his mouth near the stuffed keyhole. "Obadiah," he whispered and all at once he felt the light pouring through him, turning his spider web soul into a perfect arabesque of colors, a garden of trees and birds and beasts." | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| 8422f36 | The writer has no rights at all except those he forges for himself inside his own work. We have become so flooded with sorry fiction based on unearned liberties, or on the notion that fiction must represent the typical, that in the public mind the deeper kinds of realism are less and less understandable. | realism | Flannery O'Connor | |
| 19bd0ef | The trouble with you is," she said, "you sit in front of that window all the time where there's nothing to look out at. You need some inspiration and an out-let. If you would let me pull your chair around to look at the TV, you would quit thinking about morbid stuff, death and hell and judgement. My Lord." | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| a076882 | Those who believe that art proceeds from a healthy, and not from a diseased, faculty of the mind will take what he shows them as a revelation, not of what we ought to be but of what we are at a given time and under given circumstances; that is, as a limited revelation but revelation nevertheless. | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| f4eda29 | 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. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in .. | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| 805d5c9 | There are those who maintain that you can't demand anything of the reader. They say the reader knows nothing about art, and that if you are going to reach him, you have to be humble enough to descend to his level. This supposes either that the aim of art is to teach, which it is not, or that to create anything which is simply a good-in-itself is a waste of time. Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; .. | appreciation art beauty criticism disicipline truth | Flannery O'Connor | |
| ce26fba | Lorsque, discutant avec un ecrivain qui a trois enfants et qui voyage beaucoup, [Natacha Appanah] lui demande comment il fait, il lui reponde qu'il a << beaucoup de chance >>. Elle commente : << "Beaucoup de chance", c'est, je crois, une facon moderne de dire "J'ai une epouse formidable". >> Et elle fait les comptes : << Flannery O'Connor, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Simone de Beauvoir : pas d'enfants. Toni Morrison : deux enfants,.. | Mona Chollet | ||
| 1c06717 | I am the menial, at the beck and squawk of any feathered worthy who wants service. | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| 72e5221 | All the sentences in Madame Bovary could be examined with wonder, but there is one in particular that always stops me in admiration. Flaubert has just shown us Emma at the piano with Charles watching her. He says, "She struck the notes with aplomb and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of the village when the window was open, and o.. | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| 55e7bcd | poetry is always dependent on realism, that you have to be a realist or you can't be a poet. Mrs. | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| 16474c5 | Early in 1955 Flannery completed work on her second book, a collection of these stories which she entitled A Good Man Is Hard to Find. In January we sent it to press, having set publication for June. I remember our amusement at Evelyn Waugh's reaction to the advance proofs we sent him: "If these stories are in fact the work of a young lady, they are indeed remarkable." | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| 88630ba | It is when the individual's faith is weak, not strong, that he will be afraid of an honest fictional representation of life; and when there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the supernatural is apt gradually to be lost. | faith fiction supernatural | Flannery O'Connor | |
| bd7dc92 | Having been a Protestant, you may have the feeling that you must feel you believe; perhaps feeling belief is not always an illusion but I imagine it is most of the time; but I can understand the feeling of pain on going to Communion and it seems a more reliable feeling than joy. Do you know the Hopkins-Bridges correspondence? Bridges wrote Hopkins at one point and asked him how he could possibly learn to believe, expecting, I suppose, a met.. | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| 6136062 | Any criticism at all which depresses you to the extent that you feel you cannot ever write anything worth anything is from the Devil and to subject yourself to it is for you an occasion of sin. In you the talent is there and you are expected to use it. Whether the work itself is completely successful, or whether you ever get any worldly success out of it, is a matter of no concern to you. It is like the Japanese swordsmen who are indifferen.. | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| dae5ce5 | She had never given much thought to the devil for she felt that religion was essentially for those people who didn't have the brains to avoid evil without it. | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| 3e14608 | I don't recall that when I was in high school or college, any novel was ever presented to me to study as a novel. In fact, I was well on the way to getting a Master's degree in English before I really knew what fiction was, and I doubt if I would ever have learned then, had I not been trying to write it. I believe that it's perfectly possible to run a course of academic degrees in English and to emerge a seemingly respectable Ph.D. and stil.. | college english-classes english-degrees fiction reading | Flannery O'Connor | |
| 3afb8b9 | The isolated imagination is easily corrupted by theory, but the writer inside his community seldom has such a problem. | writing writing-groups | Flannery O'Connor | |
| cffccc5 | Remember what you won't get if you don't mind," her grandfather remarked." | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| 27ecb78 | The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee. | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| 83d2cf1 | 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 | ||
| 2d63831 | He was singing a hillbilly song that sounded half like a love song and half like a hymn. | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| f470103 | I like to walk in the woods and see what Mother Nature is wearing. | personification thought-provoking | Flannery O'Connor | |
| 5960253 | From 15 to 18 is an age at which one is very sensitive to the sins of others, as I know from recollections of myself. At that age you don't look for what is hidden. It is a sign of maturity not to be scandalized and to try to find explanations in charity. | charity explanations-in-charity hidden maturity scandal sign-of-maturity sins | Flannery O'Connor | |
| 9102a0f | Nobody with a good car needs to be justified. | Flannery O'Connor | ||
| c784b70 | IN 1710, THE ENGLISH FREETHINKER Thomas Woolston (1670-1731) expressed his confidence that religion would vanish by 1900.1 Voltaire (1695-1778) thought this much too pessimistic and predicted that religion would be gone from the Western world within the next fifty years--by about 1810. | Rodney Stark | ||
| e2e0d8e | In any event, should you doubt that your knowledge of Western history is distorted by the work of these distinguished bigots, consider whether you believe any of the following statements: The Catholic Church motivated and actively participated in nearly two millennia of anti-Semitic violence, justifying it on grounds that the Jews were responsible for the Crucifixion, until the Vatican II Council was shamed into retracting that doctrine in .. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 0290b61 | It is difficult to know how anyone, even the most bitter anti-Catholic, could truly have believed any of this! By itself, the biography of Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) makes a travesty of all these claims. In 1148, the Maimonides family pretended to convert to Islam when the Jews of Cordoba were told to become Muslims or leave, upon pain of death. Note that when most historians mention that in 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella ordered the Jews of.. | Rodney Stark | ||
| 6a3ea6a | One of the frustrations of having a mind trained to think and consider possibilities was that it couldn't simply be stopped once engaged. | Mel Odom | ||
| daac576 | I think it's better to be a legend while ye're alive to enjoy it. | Mel Odom | ||
| 9ae1621 | Idly, Wick wondered if he should feel insulted. Then he decided there really wasn't any room for considering an insult with all the fear running rampant in his mind. Maybe he was quiet on the outside, but he knew he was running around screaming inside his thoughts. | composure | Mel Odom | |
| 6567e86 | He had fought wizards (though not because he wished to), battled goblinkin (only because running hadn't been an option at the time), and faced incredible monsters (drat the luck he sometimes had when he thought about it). | luck | Mel Odom | |
| 8d8c355 | ABUELO.--Me decia Telva que te andaban rondando no se que ideas tristes por la cabeza. ADELA.--Bah, tonterias. Pequenas cosas, que una misma agranda porque a veces da gusto llorar sin saber por que. | Alejandro Casona | ||
| 0ec1515 | PEREGRINA.--No os entiendo. Si os oigo quejaros siempre de la vida, ?por que os da tanto miedo dejarla? ABUELO.-- No es por lo que dejamos aqui. Es porque no sabemos lo que hay al otro lado. PEREGRINA.--Lo mismo ocurre cuando el viaje es al reves. Por eso lloran los ninos al nacer. | muerte vida | Alejandro Casona | |
| b3e45ef | Diagramming made language seem friendly, like a dog who doesn't bark, but, instead, trots over to greet you, wagging its tail. | grammar | Kitty Burns Florey | |
| bb51927 | Never think that by releasing me you will be free. You would only condemn us to an ultimate hell on earth. You would only free something else to destroy us both. | Malcolm Lowry | ||
| 44914c1 | Under the volcano! It was not for nothing the ancients had placed Tartarus under Mt. Aetna, nor within it, the monster Typhoeus, with his hundred heads and--relatively--fearful eyes and voices. | Malcolm Lowry | ||
| 37c714d | In the war to come correspondents would assume unheard of importance, plunging through flame to feed the public its little gobbets of dehydrated excrement. | journalist war world-war-2 ww2 | Malcolm Lowry | |
| f39c185 | Here's what I love about dogs. They aren't careful not to disturb you. They don't overthink. They jump on the bed or the sofa or the chair and plop down. They come and they go. I'm not sure they love me exactly, but they count on me because I am a source of heat and food and pleasure and affection. If one of them is lying next to me and suddenly prefers the sofa, I don't take it personally. Dogs don't wake up on the wrong side of the bed. T.. | Abigail Thomas |