Flannery O'Connor Quotes - Page 11

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• ... the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fiction, Mystery, Human Life

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.176, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• He and the girl had almost nothing to say to each other. One thing he did say was, 'I ain't got any tattoo on my back.' 'What you got on it?' the girl said. 'My shirt,' Parker said. 'Haw.' 'Haw, haw,' the girl said politely.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Tattoo, Girl, Shirts

  Flannery O'Connor (1965). “Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories”, p.228, Macmillan

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• Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are

  Flannery O'Connor

  Knowing Who You Are, Ideas, Generations

  Flannery O'Connor (1971). “The Complete Stories”, p.407, Macmillan

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• The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she liver with, her only boy.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Change, Son, Grandmother

  Flannery O'Connor (1993). “"A Good Man is Hard to Find"”, p.31, Rutgers University Press

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• Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Integrity, Lying, Mean

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.115, Macmillan

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• I have also led you astray by talking of technique as if it were something that could be separated from the rest of the story. Technique can't operate at all, of course, except on believable material.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Talking, Technique

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.171, Macmillan

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• The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Doe, Attention, Literature

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.84, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

• Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fall, Writing, Hair

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.77, Macmillan

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• Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Novelists, Literature, Losing

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.29, Macmillan

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• There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fall, Evil, Damnation

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• You know," Daddy said, "it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!

  Flannery O'Connor

  Boys, Daddy, Asking

  Flannery O'Connor (2016). “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, p.14, Faber & Faber

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• He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Broken, Feelings, Giants

  Flannery O'Connor (2007). “Wise Blood: A Novel”, p.70, Macmillan

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• The reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Editors, Horror, Critics

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.90, Macmillan

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• As for the blood and the head business, the blood and the head work together and what is not first in the blood can sometimes reach it by going first through the head and what is wrong in the blood can sometimes be tempered by the head.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Blood, Working Together

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• Far be it for me to have worked it out in any abstract way. I don't know why the bull and Mrs. May have to die, or why Mr. Fortune and Mary Fortune: I just feel in my bones that that is the way it has to be. If I had the abstraction first I don't suppose I would write the story.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Empathy, Apathy

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• Nobody with a good car needs to be justified.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Car, Needs, Justified

  Flannery O'Connor (2007). “Wise Blood: A Novel”, p.109, Macmillan

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• Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding

  Flannery O'Connor

  Practice, Be Prepared, Restraint

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• But learned people can analyze for me why I fear hell and their implication is that there is no hell. But I believe in hell. Hell seems a great deal more feasible to my weak mind than heaven. No doubt because hell is a more earth-seeming thing. I can fancy the tortures of the damned but I cannot imagine the disembodied souls hanging in a crystal for all eternity praising God.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, People, Heaven

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• the writer is initially set going by literature more than by life.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Experience, Literature

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.45, Macmillan

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• I know that the writer does call up the general and maybe the essential through the particular, but this general and essential is still deeply embedded in mystery. It is not answerable to any of our formulas.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Happiness, Essentials, Doe

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “Collected Works”, New York, NY : Library of America : Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by Viking Press

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• I believe the teacher's work is largely negative, that it is largely a matter of saying, "This doesn't work because ..." or "This does work because ..." The because is very important. The teacher can help you understand the nature of your medium, and he can guide you in your reading.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Teacher, Teaching, Reading

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.86, Macmillan

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• I will rejoice the day when they say: This is right whether we all rot on top of each other or not, dear children, as we certainly may. Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Children, Practice, Abortion

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