Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles wr... - Flannery O'Connor

"Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place... Nothing outside you can give you any place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got."

"Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better."

"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."

"Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better."

"People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them."