Flannery O'Connor Quotes

It's while writing that suddenly a point of view appears: 'So, that's what I really thought about this thing'. Then it feels part of me.

I write to find out what I think.

I write to discover what I think.

Writing has got to be an act of discovery....I write to find out what I'm thinking about.

It is for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write.

I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them.

When we write we begin to taste the texture of our own mind

Writing helped me understand what I was thinking about.

I didn't intend to write about totems or people searching. I tried not to constrain myself, and this is what I ended up with. There's this great Auden quote: "I look at what I write so I can see what I think."

Thank God for being a writer, because you do sort of find out what you think by the process of writing.

I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.

The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.

During the act of writing I have told myself something that I didn't know I knew.

The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind.

I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose-to find out what I think, to know where I stand.

Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

I find it easier to tell someone what's in my head once it's on paper, rather than write with someone in mind.

The most real dialogue for me is when I am alone, writing.

I tend to write from a personal place, and most of the time when I'm writing by myself, it's coming from something I've experienced.

When you're writing, I think a big part of writing comes out of an attempt to understand yourself. You're dealing with emotions and thoughts that are native to you. So that probably winds up in your characters.

I think that writing is a process that tells you what you think. You sometimes actually don't know what your opinion is until you hear yourself trying to piece it out and have it make sense to you. The process itself is so bizarre and mysterious that you never know what it's going to tell you.

If you want to understand what you're thinking, you kind of have to work it through and write it. And the only way to work it through, for me, is to write it.

I am never as clear about any matter as when I have finished writing about it.

I don't write for catharsis; I have to write to understand.

I write what I write and I honestly don't care if it gets on or not. I'm writing to see if I can find out some of what I think about any number of situations. I work it out in the writing.