A Quote by Flannery O'Connor

... the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life.

Flannery O'Connor

Quote Topics

Concern Fiction Fiction Writer Human Human Life Life Main Mystery Writer

Quote Author

Flannery O'Connor
American - Novelist
March 25, 1925 - August 3, 1964

The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.

Tana French

The main concern of the study is with the outline of a theoretical system. Its minor variations from writer to writer are not a matter of concern to this analysis.

Talcott Parsons

My main concern is meeting with public because my main commitment, main interest is promotion of human value, human affection, compassion and religious harmony.

Dalai Lama

The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.

Chinua Achebe

My main interest is in the promotion of human values. From birth we have a sense of affection and some sense of concern for others. We need to nurture it. Scientists have found that to ensure even physical health peace of mind is essential. People often think that love and compassion are only matters of religious concern, but in fact such values are necessary in all human relations

Dalai Lama

The main difficulty is finding an idea that really excites me. We live in an age when miracles are no longer miracles, and science and the future are losing their sense of mystery. For science fiction, or at least the type of science fiction I write, this development is almost fatal, but I'm still giving it all I've got.

Liu Cixin

Creative non-fiction is such a liberating genre because it allows the non-fiction writer, whether he or she be journalist or essayist, to use all of the techniques of the fiction writer and all of the ideas, creative approaches, that fiction writers get a chance to use, but they have to use it in a true story.

Lee Gutkind

Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.

Joyce Carol Oates

We live on a minute island of known things. Our undiminished wonder at the mystery which surrounds us is what makes us human. In science fiction we can approach that mystery, not in small, everyday symbols, but in bigger ones of space and time.

Damon Knight

The mystery of being human and, certainly, of being a Catholic lies in our embracing together the imperfect state known as the human condition. First and foremost, if we could ever be perfect or do things perfectly, we would eliminate mystery, an essential ingredient in the good life and the spiritual life.

Eugene Kennedy

There's the fact that American fiction is basically the most apolitical fiction on the globe. A South American writer wouldn't dare think of writing a novel if it didn't allude to the system into which these people are orchestrated - or an Eastern European writer, or a Russian writer, or a Chinese writer. Only American writers are able to imagine that the government and the corporations - all of it - seem to have no effect whatsoever.

Michael Cunningham

No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.

Cynthia Ozick

No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, dont confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.

Cynthia Ozick

I view myself as a fiction writer who just happens to write nonfiction. I think I look at the world through a fiction-writer's eyes.

Tom Bissell

Literature remains an indispensable human activity, in which the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has no duty to the masses or society, and ethical or moral pronouncements added by busybody critics are of no concern to the writer.