Flannery O'Connor Quotes - Page 7

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• The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at truth.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Truth Is, Used, Distortion

  9 Copy quote

• The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery; that it has, for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Catholic, Mind

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.146, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Stories, States, Theme

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

  5 Copy quote

• Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Deals

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.342, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

• At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Despair, Age, Literature

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.159, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• Technique in the minds of many is something rigid, something like a formula that you impose on the material; but in the best stories it is something organic, something that grows out of the material, and this being the case, it is different for every story of any account that has ever been written.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Mind, Technique

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.67, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• The problem of the novelist who wishes to write about a man's encounter with God is how he shall make the experience--which is both natural and supernatural--understandable, and credible, to his reader. In any age this would be a problem, but in our own, it is a well- nigh insurmountable one. Today's audience is one in which religious feeling has become, if not atrophied, at least vaporous and sentimental.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Religious, Writing, Men

  7 Copy quote

• Christianity is a strangely cheery religion.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christianity, Theologian

  5 Copy quote

• When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.143, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

• I don’t want any of this artificial superficial feeling stimulated by the choir. Today I have proved myself a glutton—​for Scotch oatmeal cookies and erotic thought. There is nothing left to say of me.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Scotch, Oatmeal, Erotic

  9 Copy quote

• Tennessee's a hillbilly dumping ground, and Georgia's a lousy state too.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Tennessee, Georgia, Hillbilly

  5 Copy quote

• I write any sort of rubbish which will cover the main outlines of the story, then I can begin to see it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Stories, Rubbish

  5 Copy quote

• Even a child with normal feet was in love with the world after he had got a new pair of shoes.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Children, Shoes, Feet

  Flannery O'Connor (1971). “The Complete Stories”, p.459, Macmillan

  13 Copy quote

• It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object they actually see.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Ideas, People

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.67, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

• Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama . . . . Either one is serious about salvation or one is not. And it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy. Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Drama, Soul, Littles

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.167, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• ...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Mean, Men, Doe

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

  7 Copy quote

• I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it. Nobody could then 'smile darkly and ignore the howls.' Even if there were no Church to teach me this, writing two novels would do it. I think the more you write, the less inclined you will be to rely on theories like determinism. Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Heart, Thinking

  5 Copy quote

• A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Stories, Muscles, Wells

  11 Copy quote

• I never understand how writers can succumb to vanity - what you work the hardest on is usually the worst.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Vanity, Worst, Hardest

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.200, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

• People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, People, Novel

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.78, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

• I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Home, Tired, Heart

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.47, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• I was a very ancient twelve; my views at that age would have done credit to a Civil War veteran. I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway, less burdened. The weight of the centuries lies on children, I'm sure of it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Children, War, Lying

  11 Copy quote

• Faith has to take in all the other possibilities it can.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Possibility

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.231, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

• It was not right to believe anything you couldn't see or hold in your hands or test with your teeth.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, Hands, Teeth

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

  5 Copy quote

• I'm going to preach there was no Fall because there was nothing to fall from, and no Redemption because there was no Fall, and no Judgment because there wasn't the first two. Nothing matters but that Jesus was a liar.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Jesus, Liars, Fall

  Flannery O'Connor (1965). “Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories”, p.27, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  5 Copy quote

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