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

Related Quotes

At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.

— Flannery O'Connor

When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.

— Flannery O'Connor

BusinessGodBooks

Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.

— Flannery O'Connor

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

— Flannery O'Connor

AbleAboutCannot

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

— Flannery O'Connor

DecayExperienceFalls