Frank O'Connor Quotes

• The short story is the art form that deals with the individual when there is no longer a society to absorb him, and when he is compelled to exist, as it were, by his own inner light.

  Frank O'Connor

  Art, Light, Stories

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• Always in the short story there is this sense of outlawed figures wandering about the fringes of society.... As a result there is in the short story at its most characteristic something we do not often find in the novel--an intense awareness of human loneliness.

  Frank O'Connor

  Loneliness, Stories, Awareness

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• All I know from my own experience is that the more loss we feel the more grateful we should be for whatever it was we had to lose. It means that we had something worth grieving for. The ones I'm sorry for are the ones that go through life not knowing what grief is.

  Frank O'Connor

  Gratitude, Sorry, Grief

  Frank O'Connor (1969). “A Set of Variations: Twenty-seven Stories”

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• I was a great believer in hot buttered toast at all hours of the day.

  Frank O'Connor

  Hot, Hours, Believer

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• Even if there were only two men left in the world and both of them saints they wouldn't be happy. One them would be bound to try and improve the other. That is the nature of things.

  Frank O'Connor

  Men, Two, Trying

  Frank O'Connor (1944). “Crab Apple Jelly: Stories and Tales”

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• There are three necessary elements in a story - exposition, development, and drama. Exposition we may illustrate as "John Fortescue was a solicitor in the little town of X"; development as "One day Mrs Fortescue told him she was about to leave him for another man"; and drama as "You will do nothing of the kind," he said.

  Frank O'Connor

  Drama, Men, One Day

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• I cant write about something I dont admire. It goes back to the old concept of the celebration: you celebrate the hero, an idea.

  Frank O'Connor

  Hero, Writing, Ideas

  Frank O'Connor, Michael A. Steinman (1994). “A Frank O'Connor Reader”, p.13, Syracuse University Press

  13 Copy quote

• No man is ever as anti-feminist as a really feminine woman.

  Frank O'Connor

  Men, Feminist, Feminism

  "My Oedipus complex and other stories".

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• I suppose we all have our little hiding-hole if the truth was known, but as small as it is, the whole world is in it, and bit by bit grows on us again till the day You find us out.

  Frank O'Connor

  World, Littles, Hiding

  Frank O'Connor (1981). “Collected stories”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

  8 Copy quote

• A man and woman in search of something are always blown apart, but it's the same wind that blows them.

  Frank O'Connor

  Blow, Men, Wind

  Frank O'Connor (2014). “Collected Stories”, p.196, Open Road Media

  6 Copy quote

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