Flannery O'Connor

I love a lot of people, understand none of them...

— Flannery O'Connor

Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

— Flannery O'Connor

Grace changes us and change is painful".

— Flannery O'Connor

Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding

— Flannery O'Connor

“I can smell the sin on your breath.”

— Flannery O'Connor

A God you understood would be less than yourself.

— Flannery O'Connor

“June Star said her hair was naturally curly.”

— Flannery O'Connor

The life you save may very well be your own.

— Flannery O'Connor

Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom.

— Flannery O'Connor

I never understand how writers can succumb to vanity - what you work the hardest on is usually the worst.

— Flannery O'Connor

Ours is the first age in history which has asked the child what he would tolerate learning.

— Flannery O'Connor

The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at truth.

— Flannery O'Connor

Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.

— Flannery O'Connor

... the novelist is bound by the reasonable possibilities, not the probabilities, of his culture.

— Flannery O'Connor

Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.

— Flannery O'Connor

She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it…

— Flannery O'Connor

Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive,…

— Flannery O'Connor

The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly…

— Flannery O'Connor

It is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them - in which case, if you don't…

— Flannery O'Connor

The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have…

— Flannery O'Connor

“When I think of all I have to be thankful for I wonder that You just don't kill me now because You've…

— Flannery O'Connor

Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still…

— Flannery O'Connor

“The novel is a more diffused form and more suited to those who like to linger along the way; it also requires…

— Flannery O'Connor

Nothing needs to happen to a writer’s life after they are 20. By then they’ve experienced more than enough to last their…

— Flannery O'Connor

“I don’t believe in classes where students criticize each other’s manuscripts. Such criticism is generally composed in equal parts of ignorance, flattery,…

— Flannery O'Connor

Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama . . . . Either one is serious about…

— Flannery O'Connor

When you leave a man alone with his Bible and the Holy Ghost inspires him, he's going to be a Catholic one…

— Flannery O'Connor

In a sense sickness is a place, more instructive than a long trip to Europe, and it's always a place where there's…

— Flannery O'Connor

“The straightforward manner is seldom equal to the complications of the good subject. There may never be anything new to say, but…

— Flannery O'Connor

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

A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the…

— Flannery O'Connor

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

“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know…

— Flannery O'Connor

“ Wise Blood has reached the age of ten and is still alive. My critical powers are just sufficient to determine this,…

— Flannery O'Connor

“Nothing outside you can give you anyplace. You needn't to look at the sky because it's not going to open up and…

— Flannery O'Connor

“Mr. Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again but this time he knew that there were…

— Flannery O'Connor

“Francis Marion Tarwater’s uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his…

— 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…

— Flannery O'Connor

“Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to…

— Flannery O'Connor

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls…

— Flannery O'Connor