Quotessence
Home / Authors / Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllWritingIfsFictionStoriesThinkingWayPeopleKnowsBelieveDoeMayChurchEnoughLiteratureWellsLifeMysteryNovelAbleWorld

Famous Flannery O'Connor Quotes

“Even in the life of a Christian, faith rises and falls like the tides of an invisible sea. It's there, even when he can't see it or feel it, if he wants it to be there. You realize, I think, that it is more valuable, more mysterious, altogether more immense than anything you can learn or decide upon It will keep you free - not free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects around you.”

IfsThinkingWantFeelsChristianFallRealizingSeaPleaseValuableIntellectInvisibleMysteriousTidesImmenseChristian FaithRise And FallDecide Upon
Author:Flannery O'Connor
Create image

“We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. 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. The writer's business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it.”

IfsLittlesEnoughFactsAbleLastsDealsTakenChildhoodInformationCollegeUniversityThese DaysContemplatingGoing OutSurvivedColleges And UniversitiesLamentation
Book:Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
Create image

“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.”

IfsMenWritingWellsFeelingsProblemWould BeAgeTodayWishNaturalReligiousAudienceReaderNovelistsEncountersSentimentalSentimentalityCredibleInsurmountable
Author:Flannery O'Connor
Create image

“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.”

IfsWellsLittlesSoulUniverseBeliefSidesRealizingComedySeriousAmountDramaSalvationSecureMaximumSeriousnessComical
Book:Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
Create image

“The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky.”

IfsLongWholeMovingUniverseStarsBlackBehindsAttentionSkyInvolvedDepthAll TimePay AttentionSilverConstructionStreaksScaffoldingConstruction Work
Book:Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories
Create image

“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.”

IfsThinkingWorldWritingHeartTwoMightWould BeLiteratureGrowsChurchTeachNovelMysteryTheoryDeterminedRelyHowlDeterminism
Author:Flannery O'Connor
Create image

“The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.”

IfsShouldWritingWellsLittlesSchoolPastLiteratureOpportunitySocialUnderstandingResponsibilityTeachDemocracyStudyTeacherLandStudentsLessonsTasteHigh SchoolCustomsFulfillingSocial StudiesEnglish TeacherSchool English
Book:Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
Create image

“...the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.”

IfsWorldBelieveFactsBodySeemsSufferingChristChurchStruggleEndureDivinityFedsCherishIf You BelieveBody Of Christ
Author:Flannery O'Connor
Create image

“Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.”

IfsWaySaidDoneHouseJesusLeftEnjoyVoicePleasureMinutesBalanceRaisedKillingBest WayBurningMeannessMisfitsBurning Down
Author:Flannery O'Connor
Create image

“He knew that he was the stuff of which fanatics and madmen are made and that he had turned his destiny as if with his bare will. He kept himself upright on a very narrow line between madness and emptiness and when the time came for him to lose his balance he intended to lurch toward emptiness and fall on the side of his choice.”

IfsMadeChoicesFallStuffSidesLosesLinesDestinyBalanceMadnessEmptinessFanaticsMadmen
Book:Three by Flannery O'Connor: Wise blood, The violent bear it away, Everything that rises must converge
Create image

“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.”

IfsThinkingHeartHas BeensHomeSeemsNightWishMinesReaderLettersTiredLiftsCaliforniaComing HomeRight PlaceOld Lady
Book:Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
Create image

“I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing a conventional novel, and I think that the quality of the novel I write will derive precisely from the peculiarity or aloneness, if you will, of the experience I write from.”

IfsThinkingFeelsWritingMayQualityNovelVirtueConnectedCraftsLimitationConventional
Book:The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
Create image

“I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested in publishing something, and if possible in making a "killing." They are interested in being a writer not in writing. . . If this is what you are interested in, I am not going to be much use to you.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWritingWellsEnoughUseKillingPublishingWriting Well
Book:Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
Create image

“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.”

IfsWritingMayTwoAbleCoursesEnergyCan DoHoursTalentGeniusHabitBlowBelieverInterfereConform
Author:Flannery O'Connor
Create image

“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.”

IfsLifeDoeSeemsLife IsNationsDoubtNotionSouthernEvidentRecognizingTextureGrotesqueAdept
Book:Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories
Create image