Art Quotes by Flannery O'Connor

13 Art quotes by Flannery O'Connor

O'Connor’s voice cuts through the ordinary with a Southern edge, turning each comment on art into a moral vignette that lingers long after reading.

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“The scientist has the habit of science; the artist, the habit of art.”

Flannery O'Connor

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The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.

Flannery O'Connor

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It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth

Flannery O'Connor

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Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.

Flannery O'Connor

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The artist uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees.

Flannery O'Connor

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“When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully,…

Flannery O'Connor

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“Art requires a delicate adjustment of the outer and inner worlds in such a way that, without changing their nature, they can…

Flannery O'Connor

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Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are…

Flannery O'Connor

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No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of…

Flannery O'Connor

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There may never be anything new to say, but there is always a new way to say it, and since, in art,…

Flannery O'Connor

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“Those who believe that art proceeds from a healthy, and not from a diseased, faculty of the mind will take what he…

Flannery O'Connor

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“I must write down that I am to be an artist. Not in the sense of aesthetic frippery but in the sense…

Flannery O'Connor

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“Unless we are willing to accept our artists as they are, the answer to the question, "Who speaks for America today?" will…

Flannery O'Connor

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More by Flannery O'Connor

“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

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... 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

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“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

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“For the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction.”

Flannery O'Connor

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Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.

Flannery O'Connor

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To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.

Flannery O'Connor

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“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

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“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

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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

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“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

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“Mrs. May winced. She thought the word Jesus should be kept inside the church building like other words inside the bedroom.”

Flannery O'Connor

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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

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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

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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

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“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

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