Flannery O'Connor Quotes

Creativity was definitely a big part of our household, and I remember always writing stories and being encouraged to be creative.

I . . . am always half afraid of finding a clever novel too clever--& of finding my own story & my own people all forestalled.

Quit dwelling on other people's stories and make up some of your own.

Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don't expect to go.

You could omit anything if you knew that the omitted part would strengthen the short story and make people feel something more than they understood

There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.

Writing your own story around the same ideas is not plagiarism; at worst, it's being unoriginal.

What's really good is that there are people making stories and writing them and the vast majority never see the light of day and it doesn't matter a fig.

If you just write the kinds of stories you think others will want to read, you'll be competing with cartoonists who are far more enthusiastic for that kind of comic than you are, and they'll kick your ass every time.

God bless my soul, woman, the more personal you are the better! This is a story of human beings - not dummies! Be personal - be prejudiced - be catty - be anything you please! Write the thing your own way. We can always prune out the bits that are libellous afterwards!

Everything has already been done. every story has been told every scene has been shot. it’s our job to do it one better.

I cannot write as well as some people; my talent is in coming up with good stories about lawyers.That is what I am good at.

I didn't want to just write stories that were entertaining. Nor did I want to be so scholarly that people couldn't digest it.

If you have written something that the film people want, like a book, it does give you a way in.

Storytelling wise, you've gotta take it as far as you can possibly take it with each individual movie. If you're holding out something for a sequel or some cliff-hanger, that's not how I think of a satisfying story.

I looked at the world of books and just went, Oh my gosh, if I'm writing novels, I'm on the same shelves as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Petronius - whereas with comics, they've only been doing them for a hundred years, and there's stuff that nobody's done before. I think I'll go off and do some of the stuff no one's ever done before.

I think it's really boring, from the point of view of the novelist, to write about yourself. Tedious. But that's very hard to explain to people who really don't believe in the possibility of invention.

Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

People write a lot of similar material. That's why I try to come up with the most absurd jokes.

I think a lot of creators are attracted to those toys they got to play with when they were young, and everyone wants to write a Superman story or a Batman story or a Spider-Man story. I don't know, if it's been successful for me, it should be successful for anyone. "Hit the ground with your feet running" is the secret of breaking new characters when it seems like no one else is having any luck.

I want my stories to move people ... to feel some kind of reward from the writing.

I try to write books that are different from the books I've already written. I think one of the thing I really try to do is reinvent how a novel can be written.

I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.

I think as you grow up and you see things which are around you and you ask questions and you hear the answers, your situation becomes more and more of a puzzle. Now, why is it like this, why are things like this and since writing is one way in which one can ask this questions and try to find these answers, it seems to me a very natural thing to do, especially as it meant stories which I always found moving, almost unbearably necessary.

Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.