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Quote by Flannery O'Connor

Work

Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

This book is a compilation of essays that delve into a range of topics, offering insights into the author's perspectives on literature, art, and personal anecdotes. more

Author

Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor was an American writer known for her unique Southern background and profound religious themes. Her works often explore moral and religious issues through satire and humor, with her novels 'Wise Blood' and 'The Violent Bear It Away' being among her most famous. more

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“At the beginning of their careers many writers have a need to overwrite. They choose carefully turned-out phrases; they want to impress their readers with their large vocabularies. By the excesses of their language, these young men and women try to hide their sense of inexperience. With maturity the writer becomes more secure in his ideas. He finds his real tone and develops a simple and effective style.”

“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”

“Writing a first draft is like groping one's way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you've forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for rewriting and revising are how one's mind comes to inhabit the material fully.”

“So I made an outline. Well, you know, days are going by, and I am not writing anything because this thing is laid out in front of me. It's as if you get every brochure for a trip you are going to go on and you get the minutest details of every step along the way. Well, I really doubt you're going to then get in the car and go. You know, it's like, why bother if it's all laid out in front of you?”