Flannery O'Connor Quotes
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Behind the newspaper Julian was withdrawing into the inner compartment of his mind where he spent most of his time. This was a kind of mental bubble in which he established himself when he could not bear to be a part of what was going on around him. From it he could see out and judge but in it he was safe from any kind of penetration from without. It was the only place where he felt free of the general idiocy of his fellows. His mother had never entered it but from it he could see her with absolute clarity.
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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.
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I will rejoice the day when they say: This is right whether we all rot on top of each other or not, dear children, as we certainly may. Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding.
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She would of been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.
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A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.
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The reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.
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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.
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I was a very ancient twelve; my views at that age would have done credit to a Civil War veteran. I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway, less burdened. The weight of the centuries lies on children, I'm sure of it.
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In yourself right now is all the place you've got.
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I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear.
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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.
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When there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the spiritual is apt gradually to be lost.
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Faith comes and goes. It rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is just as presumptuous to think that unbelief will.
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It's easier to bleed than sweat, Mr. Motes.
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...the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.
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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.
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I doubt if the texture of Southern life is any more grotesque than that of the rest of the nation, but it does seem evident that the Southern writer is particularly adept at recognizing the grotesque; and to recognize the grotesque, you have to have some notion of what is not grotesque and why.
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There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it; and it's well to remember that the serious fiction writer always writes about the whole world.
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The meaning of the story is the story.
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The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have to get it in your blood, not in the head.
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Most of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow.
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The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself.
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I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway, less burdened.
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When using dialect, use it lightly. A dialect word here and there is enough. All you want to do is suggest. Never let it call attention to itself.