Quotes - Stephen Ramey (steveglines) (Littleton, MA) Showing 1-22 of 22

#1

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

tags: truth

#2

“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
― Flannery O'Connor

tags: criticism, humor, writing

2052 likes

#3

“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

tags: creative-process, escape, novels, reality, writing

627 likes

#4

“People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.”
― Flannery O'Connor

339 likes

#5

“To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.”
― Flannery O'Connor

239 likes

#6

“Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

241 likes

#7

“There are all kinds of truth ... but behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

107 likes

#8

“Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.”
― Flannery O'Connor

124 likes

#9

“Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

178 likes

#10

“There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

tags: art, fiction, on-fiction, talent, value, vocation, writing

78 likes

#11

“I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.”
― Flannery O'Connor

530 likes

#12

“She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories

tags: education

73 likes

#13

“Grace changes us and change is painful".”
― Flannery O'Connor

90 likes

#14

“Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn't stifle enough of them.”
― Flannery O'Connor

tags: education, humour, literary-criticism, writing

49 likes

#15

“I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.”
― Flannery O'Connor

36 likes

#16

“I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.”
― Flannery O'Connor

46 likes

#17

“The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”
― Dorothy Parker

1980 likes

#18

“I hate writing, I love having written.”
― Dorothy Parker

tags: writing, writing-process

1541 likes

#19

“If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.”
― Dorothy Parker

67 likes

#20

“Beware the man of a single book.”
― St. Thomas Aquinas

tags: books-reading, ignorance, illiteracy, limitation

487 likes

#21

“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques

tags: cabbage, cooking, fragrance, humor, idealism, metaphors, perfume, roses, similes

473 likes

#22

“Another damn'd thick, square book! Always, scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?

(On publication of Vol. 1 of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire”
― Duke of Gloucester

15 likes

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