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I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.
Flannery O'Connor -
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.
Flannery O'Connor
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People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience.
Flannery O'Connor -
... Simone Weil is a mystery that should keep us all humble, and I need it more than most. Also she's the example of the religious consciousness without a religion which maybe sooner or later I will be able to write about.
Flannery O'Connor -
I know that the writer does call up the general and maybe the essential through the particular, but this general and essential is still deeply embedded in mystery. It is not answerable to any of our formulas.
Flannery O'Connor -
In the first place you can be so absolutely honest and so absolutely wrong at the same time that I think it is better to be a combination of cautious and polite.
Flannery O'Connor -
...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.
Flannery O'Connor -
It was not right to believe anything you couldn't see or hold in your hands or test with your teeth.
Flannery O'Connor
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Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.
Flannery O'Connor -
I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested in publishing something, and if possible in making a "killing." They are interested in being a writer not in writing. . . If this is what you are interested in, I am not going to be much use to you.
Flannery O'Connor -
Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.
Flannery O'Connor -
Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.
Flannery O'Connor -
There is a question whether faith can or is supposed to be emotionally satisfying. I must say that the thought of everyone lolling about in an emotionally satisfying faith is repugnant to me. I believe that we are ultimately directed Godward but that this journey is often impeded by emotion.
Flannery O'Connor -
A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell them to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.
Flannery O'Connor
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Christianity is a strangely cheery religion.
Flannery O'Connor -
Poorly written novels--no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters--are not good in themselves and are therefore not really edifying.
Flannery O'Connor -
He and the girl had almost nothing to say to each other. One thing he did say was, 'I ain't got any tattoo on my back.' 'What you got on it?' the girl said. 'My shirt,' Parker said. 'Haw.' 'Haw, haw,' the girl said politely.
Flannery O'Connor -
You shall know the truth, and it will make you odd.
Flannery O'Connor -
If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.
Flannery O'Connor -
Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.
Flannery O'Connor
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The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot.
Flannery O'Connor -
A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.
Flannery O'Connor -
It began to drizzle rain and he turned on the windshield wipers; they made a great clatter like two idiots clapping in church.
Flannery O'Connor -
He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.
Flannery O'Connor