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A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. ("Writing Short Stories")

— Flannery O'Connor Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1969)

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More quotes by Flannery O'Connor

You weren't supposed to eat it. (year unkonwn)

I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.

Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1969)

Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't write fiction. It isn't grand enough for you.

Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1969)

The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience.

Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1969)

I believe that the basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation. ("The Teaching of Literature")

Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1969)

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

Strength of creative writing lies in the skill of handling words and articulating artistic expression of feelings.”

Suman Pokhrel

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Robert Benchley

Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.

William Wordsworth Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Flannery O'Connor (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.