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"The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery."
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Explore more quotes by Flannery O'Connor
"I don't recall that when I was in high school or college, any novel was ever presented to me to study as a novel. In fact, I was well on the way to getting a Master's degree in English before I really knew what fiction was, and I doubt if I would ever have learned then, had I not been trying to write it. I believe that it's perfectly possible to run a course of academic degrees in English and to emerge a seemingly respectable Ph.D. and still not know how to read fiction."
"If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival."
"When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic I cannot afford to be less than an artist."
"When something is finished, it cannot be possessed. Nothing can be possessed but the struggle."
"When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures."
Exlpore more Creativity quotes
"The future is created by those who have a great imagination and the will to make it a reality by their actions."
"The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer."
"If I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write about it but rather to keep on learning about it always and at no time, unless you are very egotistical, which, of course, accounts for many books, will you be able to say: now I know all about this and will write about it."
"Skill gives you legs to jog, talent gives you legs to run, brilliance gives you legs to sprint, but genius gives you wings to fly."
"For you to make your creative work creative, you must seek creativity from the creator."
"Now go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here."
"Imagination is a glorious wonder."
"Writing the same kind of material is no guarantee you'll be working from the same ethos so that writers from different fields are just as likely to have an understanding of each other's work as someone working in the same genre."
"Astray from a deep sleep chronic as I write by phonics, like insomnia I will always live the onyx night for revealing, and, upon it, still I'll steal the bright light of day right away just to keep building at speeds hypersonic."
"Every time a man puts a new idea across he finds ten men who thought of it before he did - but they only thought of it."
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