Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
... the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
... Simone Weil is a mystery that should keep us all humble, and I need it more than most. Also she's the… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
A gift of any kind is a considerable responsibility. It is a mystery in itself, something gratuitous and wholly undeserved, something whose… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I know that the writer does call up the general and maybe the essential through the particular, but this general and essential… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
“Wait here, wait here!" he cried and jumped up and began to run for help toward a cluster of lights he saw in the… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
... the man in the violent situation reveals those qualities least dispensable in his personality, those qualities which are all he will have to… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“I don’t know how to cure the source-itis except to tell you that I can discover a good many possible sources myself for Wise… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“For the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction.” — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“He felt his hunger no longer as a pain but as a tide. He felt it rising in himself through time and darkness, rising… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
Technique in the minds of many is something rigid, something like a formula that you impose on the material; but in the best stories… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“There are all kinds of truth ... but behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.” — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“Mrs. May winced. She thought the word Jesus should be kept inside the church building like other words inside the bedroom.” — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
I feel that discussing story-writing in terms of plot, character, and theme is like trying to describe the expression on a face by saying… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
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… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
“Hazel Motes sat at a forward angel on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share
