Flannery O'Connor Quotes About Storytellers

Quotes about: Storytellers

• There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fall, Writing, Stories

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.48, Macmillan

• St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Country, Father, Past

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.35, Macmillan

• There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fall, Evil, Damnation

• In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Writing, Moral Judgement

• There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Running, Long, People

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.192, Macmillan

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