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...you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.
Flannery O'Connor -
Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.
Flannery O'Connor
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There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.
Flannery O'Connor -
We are now living in an age which doubts both fact and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and judge.
Flannery O'Connor -
I'm a member and preacher to that church where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way.
Flannery O'Connor -
On the subject of the feminist business, I just never think...of qualities which are specifically feminine or masculine. I suppose I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non-Irksome without regard to sex. Yes and there are the Medium Irksome and the Rare Irksome.
Flannery O'Connor -
The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself.
Flannery O'Connor -
Even a child with normal feet was in love with the world after he had got a new pair of shoes.
Flannery O'Connor
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Most of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow.
Flannery O'Connor -
The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.
Flannery O'Connor -
Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.
Flannery O'Connor -
Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.
Flannery O'Connor -
The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.” (August 9, 1955)
Flannery O'Connor -
The mind serves best when it's anchored in the Word of God. There is no danger then of becoming an intellectual without integrity.
Flannery O'Connor
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Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
Flannery O'Connor -
I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.
Flannery O'Connor -
You can't clobber any reader while he's looking. You divert his attention, then you clobber him and he never knows what hit him.
Flannery O'Connor -
I'm a full-time believer in writing habits...You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us only have talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and mental habits or it dries up and blows away. Of course you have to make your habits in this conform to what you can do. I write only about two hours every day because that's all the energy I have, but I don't let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place.
Flannery O'Connor -
Nothing needs to happen to a writer’s life after they are 20. By then they’ve experienced more than enough to last their creative life.
Flannery O'Connor -
Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.
Flannery O'Connor
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In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery.
Flannery O'Connor -
Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are.
Flannery O'Connor -
... the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life.
Flannery O'Connor -
It's easier to bleed than sweat, Mr. Motes.
Flannery O'Connor