Flannery O'Connor Quotes - Page 9

Quotes about:

• Woman! Do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!

  Flannery O'Connor

  Looks

  Flannery O'Connor (2016). “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, p.119, Faber & Faber

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• I am very much afraid that to the fiction writer the fact that we shall always have the poor with us is a source of satisfaction,for it means, essentially, that he will always be able to find someone like himself.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Mean, Fiction, Able

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.131, Macmillan

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• Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Pleasure

  Flannery O'Connor (1965). “Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories”, p.4, Macmillan

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• Purity strikes me as the most mysterious of the virtues and the more I think about it the less I know about it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Happiness, Thinking, Mysterious

  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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• ... the man in the violent situation reveals those qualities least dispensable in his personality, those qualities which are all he will have to take into eternity with him.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Men, Afterlife, Personality

  Flannery O'Connor (1993). “"A Good Man is Hard to Find"”, p.59, Rutgers University Press

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• Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.

  Flannery O'Connor

  People, Quality, Use

  Flannery O'Connor (2016). “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, p.116, Faber & Faber

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• Elizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Firsts, Chickens, Mines

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• Southern culture has fostered a type of imagination that has been influenced by Christianity of a not too unorthodox kind and by a strong devotion to the Bible, which has kept our minds attached to the concrete and the living symbol.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Strong, Imagination

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• Harcourt sent my book to Evelyn Waugh and his comment was: “If this is really the unaided work of a young lady, it is a remarkable product.” My mother was vastly insulted. She put the emphasis on if and lady. Does he suppose you’re not a lady? she says.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Mother, Book, Ifs And

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• Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Jesus, Moving, Dark

  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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• When we look at a good deal of serious modern fiction, and particularly Southern fiction, we find this quality about it that is generally described, in a pejorative sense, as grotesque. Of course, I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.... Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Southern, Quality

  "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction" (1960)

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• She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Father, Gone, Rooms

  Flannery O'Connor (1971). “The Complete Stories”, p.361, Macmillan

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• I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, People, Stories

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.66, Macmillan

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• When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathe News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been anticlimax.

  Flannery O'Connor

  News, Six, Chickens

  Flannery O'Connor, Rosemary M. Magee (1987). “Conversations with Flannery O'Connor”, p.38, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Thinking, Doctors, Patient

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• Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Jobs, Writing, Dust

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.68, Macmillan

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• The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have to get it in your blood, not in the head.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Self, Blood

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.518, Macmillan

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• The idea of being a writer attracts a good many shiftless people, those who are merely burdened with poetic feelings or afflicted with sensibility.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Ideas, People, Feelings

  Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose "The Nature and Aims of Fiction" (1969)

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• The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Art, Matter, Art Is

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.65, Macmillan

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• In my travels I am often asked if college stifles young writers. In my opinion, it doesn't stifle them enough.

  Flannery O'Connor

  College, Young Writers, Opinion

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• I doubt if the texture of Southern life is any more grotesque than that of the rest of the nation, but it does seem evident that the Southern writer is particularly adept at recognizing the grotesque; and to recognize the grotesque, you have to have some notion of what is not grotesque and why.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Southern, Doubt

  Flannery O'Connor (1965). “Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories”, p.23, Macmillan

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• When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Eye, Stories, Her Eyes

  Flannery O'Connor (2016). “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, p.6, Faber & Faber

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• I'm a member and preacher to that church where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Church, Lame, Way

  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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• Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Southern, Realistic, Grotesque

  "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction" (1960)

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• Good and evil appear to be joined in every culture at the spine.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Evil, Culture, Good And Evil

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.200, Macmillan

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