Flannery O'Connor Quotes
Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look.
Quotes to Explore
-
There will be statues of Bill Gates across the Third World. There's a reasonable shot that - because of his money - we will cure malaria.
-
It's hard to always be on top. You go down, you go up.
-
Born to a tribal Bedouin family of nomadic desert shepherds in the region of Tripoli, Gaddafi was profoundly anti-colonialist. It is affirmed that his paternal grandfather died fighting against the Italian invaders when Libya was invaded by them in 1911.
-
In some ways, jazz is the most precise of art forms and the loosest in the sense that it's all about improvisation, but the musicianship required is kind of insane. To actually play with real jazz musicians is a different level of musicianship that almost has no equal in any other form of music in the world.
-
Sometimes your parents are the ones with the biggest mouths of all time.
-
There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there's bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too.
-
The most striking development of the great depression of 1929 is a profound skepticism of the future of contemporary society among large sections of the American people.
-
Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.
-
I think I've always been somebody to break rules.
-
I am going to keep having fun every day I have left, because there is no other way of life. You just have to decide whether you are a Tigger or an Eeyore.
-
I do love traveling, so I've been able to travel a lot.
-
I think Ingmar Bergman, Francoise Truffaut - all these people created images in my mind, beautiful pictures, I loved what was known at that time as the foreign film.
-
Your memories from your early childhood seem to have such purchase on your emotions. They are so concrete.
-
I am sometimes sad when I hear the personal stories of Tibetan refugees who have been tortured or beaten. Some irritation, some anger comes. But it never lasts long. I always try to think at a deeper level, to find ways to console.
-
I try to just talk about human stories and what I think about religion or teapots or whatever.
-
A lot of actors and actresses pull from past experiences.
-
I will say that the food in both Japan and Italy was immaculate. I don't remember having bad food in either country.
-
The very provision of benches by the council or the corporation acknowledges the human need to be private in public, to be conspicuously idle, to have nothing better to do.
-
A distinction between renewable and not renewable energy is academic.
-
The fundamental problem is that there's no credibility in the judicial system, which is a system that's been completely politicized. This is retaliation and selective repression.
-
A man never apologizes for the fact that he has to work. He might say, 'Hey, I am so sorry my hours were long today,' but he'd never feel he has to explain the very fact that he has a career. Once I stopped apologizing, I noticed both my kids also stopped complaining and asking me 'why' I worked.
-
Real obstacles don't take you in circles. They can be overcome. Invented ones are like a maze.
-
I think everything I write is from an atheist perspective. I mean, it's partly from an atheist perspective because I'm an atheist, and I'm just not really interested in religious-based questions.
-
Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look.
