O'Connor, Mary Flannery, 1925-1964

"...I went to Sweet Briar in early March for a symposium on Religion and Art and did I ever get a stomachful [sic] of liberal religion..."

"...Next April I'm going back to Boston to talk at Boston College if I am living. I refuse any longer to set exact dates months in advance and just say the month, which cuts down somewhat on the nerve-racking end of it..."

"...I've just been going on about my fictional bidnis [sic] this summer, staying doggedly on the wrong track I think, but I suppose you have to pursue the wrong road long enough to be able to identify it and then you can/keep off it. Anyway, I'm in no hurry. Right now I've had to stop the fiction to work on a talk..."

"...Did you ever consider Wise Blood as a possibility for dramatizing? If the times were different I would suggest that, but I think it would just be taken for the super-grotesque sub-Carson McCullars sort of thing that I couldn't stand the sight or sound of..."

"The name Asbury don't interest me. What I had thought to do was use that story to help explain Walter's character (the thing in Esquire). I may not do it, I may go on and rewrite it as a story and use it in the collection..."

"I can't recollect if I answered your last letter or not and answered your question about the line in The River..."

"...The reviews are the worst part of it, whether they're good or bad..."

"I wish I could answer the questions now but I am in the hospital..."

"...That operation in February started up my disseminated lupus and I have been in the hospital again recently with that. I'm at home now..."

"...I've had four blood transfusions in the last month. The trouble is mostly kidneys - they don't refine the poisons out of the proteins and therefore you don't make blood like you should or you loose [sic] it like you shouldn't or something. As far as I am concerned as long as I can get at that typewriter, I have enough..."