Artist Quotes by Flannery O'Connor

13 Artist quotes by Flannery O'Connor

All Artist quotes Flannery O'Connor’s page

Flannery O'Connor’s brief set of 13 quotes on the artist’s craft is laced with her trademark Southern grit and moral sharpness, offering a stark look at creative responsibility.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

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

Flannery O'Connor

Image

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

Flannery O'Connor

Image

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

Flannery O'Connor

Image

Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.

Flannery O'Connor

Image

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

Flannery O'Connor

Image

“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

Image

“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

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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

Image

“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

Image

“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

Image

“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

Image

Other authors on Artist

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

Image

... 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

Image

“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

Image

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

Flannery O'Connor

Image

Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.

Flannery O'Connor

Image

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

Flannery O'Connor

Image

“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

Image

“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

Image

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

Image

“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

Image

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

Flannery O'Connor

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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

Image

“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

Image