Flannery O'Connor Quotes
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Most of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow.
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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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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 write any sort of rubbish which will cover the main outlines of the story, then I can begin to see it.
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The mind serves best when it's anchored in the Word of God. There is no danger then of becoming an intellectual without integrity.
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If you're a Catholic you believe what the Church teaches and the climate makes no difference.
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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.
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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 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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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.
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So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence.
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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.
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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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There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.
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Even a child with normal feet was in love with the world after he had got a new pair of shoes.
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She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything.
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Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it
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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.
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It's easier to bleed than sweat, Mr. Motes.
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Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are.
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The artist uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees.
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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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I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway, less burdened.