One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation,… — 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
Even in the life of a Christian, faith rises and falls like the tides of an invisible sea. It's there, even when… — 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
What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Faith comes and goes. It rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
...I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Purity strikes me as the most mysterious of the virtues and the more I think about it the less I know about… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
On the subject of the feminist business, I just never think...of qualities which are specifically feminine or masculine. I suppose I divide… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The only way, I think, to learn to write short stories is to write them, and then try to discover what you… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
The Catholic novelist in the South will see many distorted images of Christ, but he will certainly feel that a distorted image… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
I don't think you should write something as long as a novel around anything that is not of the gravest concern to… — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
In the first place you can be so absolutely honest and so absolutely wrong at the same time that I think it… — 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 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
“For the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction.” — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share Image
To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures. — Flannery O'Connor Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
