Flannery O'Connor Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• It's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Fiction, Get Away

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.76, Macmillan

  30 Copy quote

• The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.” (August 9, 1955)

  Flannery O'Connor

  August, Church, Operations

  8 Copy quote

• I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Truth, Atheism, Literature

  1952 HazelMotes. Wise Blood, ch.10.

  8 Copy quote

• When the peacock has presented his back, the spectator will usually begin to walk around him to get a front view; but the peacock will continue to turn so that no front view is possible. The thing to do then is to stand still and wait until it pleases him to turn. When it suits him, the peacock will face you. Then you will see in a green-bronze arch around him a galaxy of gazing, haloed suns.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Views, Waiting, Gazing

  31 Copy quote

• We lost our innocence in the Fall, and our turn to it is through the Redemption which was brought about by Christ's death and by our slow participation in it. Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence, which strongly suggests its opposite.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fall, Reality, Opposites

  8 Copy quote

• She would of been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Good Woman, Misfits

  6 Copy quote

• I'm a full-time believer in writing habits...You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us only have talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and mental habits or it dries up and blows awayOf course you have to make your habits in this conform to what you can do. I write only about two hours every day because that's all the energy I have, but I don't let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Blow, Two

  12 Copy quote

• It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Success, Failure, Novelists

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.306, Macmillan

  19 Copy quote

• I have what passes for an education in this day and time, but I am not deceived by it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Deceived, This Day

  6 Copy quote

• When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Rome, Done, Literature

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.220, Macmillan

  26 Copy quote

• If it's just a symbol, then
  to hell with it !

  Flannery O'Connor

  Hell, Symbols, Ifs

  6 Copy quote

• The dead don't bother with particulars.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Death, Bother

  Flannery O'Connor (1971). “The Complete Stories”, p.297, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• There is a question whether faith can or is supposed to be emotionally satisfying. I must say that the thought of everyone lolling about in an emotionally satisfying faith is repugnant to me. I believe that we are ultimately directed Godward but that this journey is often impeded by emotion

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, Journey, Emotion

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.100, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• Dear God, I don't want to have invented my faith to satisfy my weakness. I don't want to have created God to my own image as they're so fond of saying. Please give me the necessary grace, oh Lord, and please don't let it be as hard to get as Kafka made it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Giving, Grace, Weakness

  8 Copy quote

• The two worst sins of bad taste in fiction are pornography and sentimentality. One is too much sex and the other too much sentiment.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Sex, Two, Fiction

  9 Copy quote

• I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, People, Crafts

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.79, Macmillan

  24 Copy quote

• I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Irritation, Literature, Emotion

  Flannery O'Connor (2012). “Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons”, p.112, Fantagraphics Books

  6 Copy quote

• Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God.

  Flannery O'Connor

  God, Way, Limits

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.162, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• When you leave a man alone with his Bible and the Holy Ghost inspires him, he's going to be a Catholic one way or another, even though he knows nothing about the visible church. His kind of Christianity may not be socially desirable, but will be real in the sight of God.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Real, Men, Sight

  10 Copy quote

• If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fighting, Nihilism, Church

  "This Lonesome Place" by Hilton Als, www.newyorker.com. January 29, 2001.

  9 Copy quote

• All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Character, Thinking, People

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.275, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Stories, Way, Said

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.96, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• I do not like the raw sound of the human voice in unison unless it is under the discipline of music.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Voice, Discipline, Sound

  5 Copy quote

• The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Reality, Mind, Fiction

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.79, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

• If you're a Catholic you believe what the Church teaches and the climate makes no difference.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, Differences, Catholic

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.103, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

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