Flannery O’Connor quotes - page 3

Her name was Maude and she drank whisky all day from a fruit jar under the counter. (Flannery O’Connor)
There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them. View quote
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. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
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. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me. (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. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing. (Flannery O’Connor)
The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
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. View quote
Flannery O’Connor
To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility... View quote
Flannery O’Connor
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. View quote
Flannery O’Connor