Authors:
  1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. F
  4. Flannery O'Connor
  5. Quality

Flannery OConnor Quotes about Quality

All Flannery O'Connor Quotes Age Art Atheism Belief Character Childhood Children Christ Christianity Church Culture Devil Dogma Doubt Evil Experience Feelings Funny Giving Grace Happiness Heart Hell Horror Innocence Jesus Life Literature Past Personality Pleasure Quality quotes Reading Reality Religion Soul Success Suffering Teaching Truth Virtue Writing
There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern

There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we've got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech

Flannery O'Connor
Two, Southern, Quality

I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing a conventional novel, and I think that the quality of the novel I write will derive precisely from the peculiarity or aloneness, if you will, of the experience I write from.

Flannery O'Connor
Writing, Thinking, Quality
Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.10, Macmillan

When we look at a good deal of serious modern fiction, and particularly Southern fiction, we find this quality about it that is generally described, in a pejorative sense, as grotesque. Of course, I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.... 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.

Flannery O'Connor
Writing, Southern, Quality
"Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction" (1960)

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
People, Quality, Use
Flannery O'Connor (2016). “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, p.116, Faber & Faber

There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it; and it's well to remember that the serious fiction writer always writes about the whole world.

Flannery O'Connor
Writing, Stupidity, Quality
Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.77, Macmillan

You May Also Like: