Flannery O'Connor Quotes
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It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer, to believe nothing is to see nothing.
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...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.
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I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up.
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You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s sufferings and not your own.
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Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.
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Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics.
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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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Policy and politics generally go contrary to principle.
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I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.
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Nobody with a good car needs to be justified.
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If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.
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We are not judged by what we are basically. We are judged by how hard we use what we have been given. Success means nothing to the Lord.
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In my travels I am often asked if college stifles young writers. In my opinion, it doesn't stifle them enough.
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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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Satisfy your demand for reason but always remember that charity is beyond reason, and God can be known through charity.
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I never understand how writers can succumb to vanity - what you work the hardest on is usually the worst.
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The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, and of the saints, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints. Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul
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Her name was Maude and she drank whisky all day from a fruit jar under the counter.
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I am a Catholic not like someone else would be a Baptist or a Methodist, but like someone else would be an atheist.
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Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.
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I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it. Nobody could then 'smile darkly and ignore the howls.' Even if there were no Church to teach me this, writing two novels would do it. I think the more you write, the less inclined you will be to rely on theories like determinism. Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge.
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One old lady who wants her head lifted wouldn't be so bad, but you multiply her two hundred and fifty thousand times and what you get is a book club.
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Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama . . . . Either one is serious about salvation or one is not. And it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy. Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.
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You don't serve God by saying: the Church is ineffective, I'll have none of it. Your pain at its lack of effectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God. We help overcome this lack of effectiveness simply by suffering on account of it.