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I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both. (1956)

— Flannery O'Connor

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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)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

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.