Frances Mayes Quotes

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

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

I am very indebted to southern writers and not just Flannery O'Connor. Also Harry Crews, Larry Brown, Tennessee Williams, Barry Hannah and William Gay.

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

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

Flannery O'Connor is my creative hero. I think she's the greatest American writer. Her book, 'Mystery and Manners,' is my creative bible.

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.

So I'm not a Southern writer in the commonly held sense of the term, like Faulkner or Eudora Welty, who took the South for their entire literary environment and subject matter.

Of course, I'm of the generation that grew up with Hemingway and Faulkner as strong influences.

Faulkner was almost oriental. I never got into Faulkner.

Most writers have been influenced by Faulkner.

Faulkner is a really important figure in southern literature. I wrestle with him and his legacy every time I sit down and write a piece of fiction.

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

I'm really influenced by Southern novelists, not many movie people. More like John Faulkner, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Flannery O'Connor, John Steinbeck, and people like that.

As for the writers who have influenced me they are many. Hemingway, Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, William Goldman, Flannery O'Conner, Carson McCullers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so many others. As a kid Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard.

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

Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques.

I'm a very big Faulkner fan 'cause I'm a Southerner.

I have so many favorite writers, it's very hard to select a few... of classic writers, I have always admired Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau.

As I got into my teens, I started reading better books, beginning with the Beats and then the hippie writers, people like Wallace Stegner up in Northern California, and all the political New Journalism stuff, the Boys on the Bus dudes and Ken Kesey.

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

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

Yeah, I think A Confederacy of Dunces is probably the perfect New Orleans book.

Faulkner sat in our living room and read from Light in August. That was incredible.

I admire American literature, both contemporary and classic - 'Moby-Dick' is just about the best book in the world - and I admire British literature for its insistence on dealing with social class. It may have been an influence.