Flannery O'Connor Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• You ought to be able to discover something from your stories. If you don't, probably nobody else will.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Stories, Able, Ought

  Flannery O'Connor (2014). “Mystery and Manners”, p.60, Faber & Faber

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• It began to drizzle rain and he turned on the windshield wipers; they made a great clatter like two idiots clapping in church.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Rain, Two, Church

  Flannery O'Connor (2015). “Wise Blood”, p.46, Faber & Faber

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• It is a sign of maturity... to find explanations in charity.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Maturity, Southern, Charity

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• ... Simone Weil is a mystery that should keep us all humble, and I need it more than most. Also she's the example of the religious consciousness without a religion which maybe sooner or later I will be able to write about.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Religious, Writing, Humble

  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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• There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.

  Flannery O'Connor

  House, Yards, Biographies

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.290, Macmillan

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• Success means being heard and don't stand there and tell me that you are indifferent to being heard. You may write for the joy of it, but the act of writing is not complete in itself. It has to end in its audience.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Mean, Joy

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• If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Happiness, Survival, Routine

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• There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Running, Long, People

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.192, Macmillan

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• I write to discover what I know.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Knows

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• In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Writing, Moral Judgement

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• The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Childhood, Littles, Information

  Flannery O'Connor (2014). “Mystery and Manners”, p.49, Faber & Faber

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• The meaning of the story is the story.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Stories

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• He knew something was going to happen and his entire system was waiting on it. He thought it was going to be one of the supreme moments in life but apart from that, he didn't have the vaguest notion what it might be. He pictured himself, after it was over, as an entirely new man, with an even better personality than he had now. He sat there for about fifteen minutes and nothing happened.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Men, Personality, Waiting

  Flannery O'Connor (1983). “Three by Flannery O'Connor: Wise blood, The violent bear it away, Everything that rises must converge”, Signet Classics

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• If there is no possibility for change in a character, we have no interest in him.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Character, Possibility

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.199, Macmillan

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• The old woman was the kind who would not cut down a large old tree because it was a large old tree.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Hilarious, Cutting, Tree

  Flannery O'Connor (1971). “The Complete Stories”, p.520, Macmillan

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• There was a time when the average reader read a novel simply for the moral he could get out of it, and however na?ve that may have been, it was a good deal less na?ve than some of the limited objectives he has now. Today novels are considered to be entirely concerned with the social or economic or psychological forces that they will by necessity exhibit, or with those details of daily life that are for the good novelist only means to some deeper end.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Book, Mean, Average

  1960 'Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction'. Paper read at Wesleyan College, Fall.

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• The Church's stand on birth control is the most absolutely spiritual of all her stands and with all of us being materialists at heart, there is little wonder that it causes unease. I wish various fathers would quit trying to defend it by saying that the world can support 40 billion. 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

  Spiritual, Children, Father

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• That's the trouble with you preachers," he said. "You've all got too good to believe in anything," and he drove off with a look of disgust and righteousness.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, Looks, Trouble

  Flannery O'Connor (2007). “Wise Blood: A Novel”, p.28, Macmillan

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• The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Peculiar, Location, Problem

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.59, Macmillan

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• Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Writing, Ideas

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• I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Success, Writing

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• He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Idiot, Mystery, Endure

  Flannery O'Connor (1971). “The Complete Stories”, p.385, Macmillan

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• There may never be anything new to say, but there is always a new way to say it, and since, in art, the way of saying a thing becomes a part of what is said, every work of art is unique and requires fresh attention.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Art, Philosophical, Unique

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

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• I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Book, Controversial, Not Afraid

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.358, Macmillan

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• The life you save may very well be your own.

  Flannery O'Connor

  May, Wells

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