O'Connor, Mary Flannery, 1925-1964

"...Your mother's reaction to The Buffalo Ranch is right in line with what is to be expected. All my aunts think mine are sacrilegious. Pay it no mind and go about your bidnis [sic]..."

"...M. Coindreau, the gentleman who translated WB [sic] into French, has just spent four days with us, bringing with him the reviews of it from the French papers..."

"...I find that one story a year is a good average, for me, anyway. You can't put one out right after another. Just write every day whether you know what you're doing or not..."

"...I finally finished that farce and made it less objectionable from the local standpoint; however, my mother still didn't want me to publish it where it would be read around here...."

"Haven't heard tell of you in so long I am wondering if you got too much of that molasses you all were reducing on..."

"...I was just about to write and congratulate you and ask for some financial advice. The trouble with writing is you make all your money at once and then don't get any for years..."

"...It is my considered opinion that one reason you are not writing is that you are allowing yourself to read in the time set aside to write. You ought to set aside three hours every morning in which you write or do nothing else; no reading; no talking, no cooking, no nothing, but you sit there..."

"...I have been in the hospital in Atlanta and they have discovered that what is making my bones disintegrate is the medicine (steroids) that I have been taking these ten years to hold the lupus down..."

"...I wrote Robie Macauley a rather hot letter objecting to that lewd drawing he illustrated The Comforts of Home with in the Fall Kenyon..."

"I'd have to see those stories again to really be able to tell you what I think, but I think this: that if there is any doubt in your mind, which there seems to be, that you should wait..."