[Ads-l] Unsourced quotation

Mark Mandel markamandel at GMAIL.COM
Sun Jan 22 17:34:54 UTC 2023


Arnold Zwicky writes in his blog
https://arnoldzwicky.org/2023/01/17/the-bearded-cartoonist-post-simectomy/#more-125699
(last two paragraphs):

>>>>>
Famously, Flannery O’Connor is quoted as explaining: “I write because I
don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

So she is quoted, again and again, but never with an actual source that I
can find. However, the leading idea in her quote has been expressed in
various ways by a considerable number of writers in citable places, among
them George Bernard Shaw, Stephen King, William Faulkner, and Joan Didion.
Didion’s pithy version: “I don’t know what I think until I write it down”.
<<<<<

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