Cases Quote by Flannery O'Connor

“St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious…” quote by Flannery O'Connor — Download Open image

“St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller.”

Flannery O'Connor

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 3.7 out of 5 (10 ratings)

Cases Concerned Country Depth Dragons Father Form Jerusalem Journey Matter May Mysterious Passages Past Sides Soul Stories Storyteller Turns

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 distance ahead of him. "Help, help!" he shouted, but his voice was thin, scarcely a thread of sound. The lights drifted farther away the faster he ran and his feet moved numbly as if they carried…

Flannery O'Connor

... 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 Blood but I am often embarrassed to find that I read the sources after I had written the book. I have been exposed to Wordsworth’s “Intimation” ode but that is all I can say about it.…

Flannery O'Connor

“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 through the centuries, and he knew that it rose in a line of men whose lives were chosen to sustain it, who would wander in the world, strangers from that violent country where the silence is…

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 good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place. Nothing outside you can give you any place," he said. "You needn't look at the sky because it's not…

Flannery O'Connor

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

Explore all 432 Flannery O'Connor quotes

More Cases quotes

The time that one gains cannot be accumulated in a storehouse; it is contradictory to want to save up existence, which, the fact is,…

Simone de Beauvoir

Image

It can sometimes make people fold into themselves and kind of run away, but I think in this case these characters are being forced to face issues and emotions, feelings, that they have. So it kind of forces them to face it head on, which I think is a really interesting dynamic. And I think it should be interesting and…

Emily Deschanel

I'd always have grease in at least two places, in case the umpires would ask me to wipe one off. I never wanted to…

Gaylord Perry

Image

Islam never differentiates between men and women as regards political rights and puts them on an equal footing. However, even if a woman is…

Yusuf al-Qaradawi

Image

You gonna take the case?" It's not a case. It's a missing person. Sort of." You're gonna have a devil of a time finding…

Janet Evanovich

Image

I think we've all had enough of Coltrane saxophonists. There's a case of someone ruining a generation of saxophonists, as Louis Armstrong may have…

Paul Bley

Image

Every wife ought to answer for her man. If the husband be engaged in a seditious club, or drinks mysterious healths, or be frugal of his candles on a rejoicing night, let her look to him and keep him out of harm's way; or the world will be apt to say, she has a mind to be a widow before…

Joseph Addison

The world around us is an increasingly hostile and sinful place. Occasionally that splashes onto us, and perhaps, in the case of a few of you, it may be nearly drowning you. To anyone struggling under the burden of sin, I say again with the Prophet Joseph that God has ‘a forgiving disposition’ (Lectures on Faith, 42). You can change.…

Jeffrey R. Holland

If you followed the media you'd think that everybody in Africa was starving to death, and that's not the case; so it's important to…

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Image

[As in the case of] alcohol prohibition, illegality has driven organized crime, sent countless people to jail, and killed many thousands. Repression does not…

Sam Branson

Image

He emphasised basic truths: you are not dying yet, you have to live your life until you are. Underpinning them was the belief that the grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. I didn’t believe that at the time, but now I do. By definition, you have to…

Irvine Welsh