Scott Derrickson Quotes

I never got too specialized but did like the Southern Gothic writers like William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.

When I was twelve, I started reading Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O'Connor, James Agee, and - do we dare breathe the name - William Faulkner.

I grew up reading a lot of these super weird, genre-bending Southern gothic writers.

I learned to be a regional writer by reading people like Flannery O'Connor. She was a huge influence.

Flannery O'Connor was a revelation for me. When I read her, I was very young, and I didn't understand what she was doing. I didn't see any of the Catholicism or any of the social stuff.

Flannery O'Connor's brief life and slim output were nonetheless marked by piercing powers of observation.

I'd love to meet Flannery O'Connor. I think I'd be content to hear her speak on any subject. What forces shaped her. What nebula of books and stories were whirling together inside her at the time of her death.

I've always been drawn to dark stories. I enjoy reading Flannery O'Connor, Patricia Highsmith, and Margaret Mitchell.

I love Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor. I read a lot of American writers.

No one writes dialect better than Flannery O'Connor. No one should even try.

I don't want to pretend like I'm some intellectual person who understands Flannery O'Connor.

The book that first made me want to be a writer is Flannery O'Connor's short story collection 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find.'

When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as 'Catch-22' I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'

I'm an enormous fan of Thomas Bernhard's books, and I like the relentless feeling in his work - the pursuit of darkness, the negative - and I think in some sense I've internalised that as what one is supposed to do.

There is a satire that exists in 'My Arm,' but there is also an honoring of some of the stronger ideas that I've raided from visual art.

As Richard Pryor was to Eddie Murphy, that's what Kurt Vonnegut was to me.

My biggest superhero of writing is Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine fabulist. He's an amazingly perceptive writer, but also willing to make a joke.

I became a novelist because of 'Gone With the Wind,' or more precisely, my mother raised me up to be a 'Southern' novelist, with a strong emphasis on the word 'Southern' because 'Gone With the Wind' set my mother's imagination ablaze when she was a young girl growing up in Atlanta.

Although Kurt Vonnegut may not be considered a humor writer, 'Breakfast of Champions' is one of the funniest books I've ever read.

My cartoon strips in college strived to have the Schulzian mix of surrealism and Charlie Brown angst. A bit of that combo shows up in 'Up.'

What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?

I think of myself as writing realist American fiction. 'Cynical but hopeful' wouldn't be the worst thing I've ever been called.

I taught elementary school and painted apartments for ten years. Now I write full-time and never have to change a thing I write. Every book comes to me in a flash of inspiration and takes me about two seconds to finish. The longer books, like the 'Time Warp Trio' novels, take a little longer to write - more like four seconds.

One of my favorite things I read was John Steinbeck's journals while he was writing 'East of Eden,' which was so cool.

Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, screenwriters like Ben Hecht and William Goldman, and journalists/columnists like H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins.