Flannery O'Connor Quotes

Quotes about:

• You shall know the truth, and it will make you odd.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Funny, Truth, Humorous

  126 Copy quote

• Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Hell, Wells, Symbols

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.125, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Catholic, Grace, Human Nature

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.307, Macmillan

  50 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. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell them to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Would Be, Fiction

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

  101 Copy quote

• I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Inspiring, Writing, Thinking

  27 Copy quote

• [To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

  Flannery O'Connor

  Humility, Self, Way

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.35, Macmillan

  82 Copy quote

• You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s sufferings and not your own.

  Flannery O'Connor

  People, Suffering, Christ

  133 Copy quote

• ...you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Struggle, World, Cherish

  Flannery O'Connor (1993). “"A Good Man is Hard to Find"”, p.129, Rutgers University Press

  97 Copy quote

• The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Funny, Life, Change

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

  120 Copy quote

• What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Thinking, People, Religion

  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

  90 Copy quote

• A God you understood would be less than yourself.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Would Be, Understood

  20 Copy quote

• One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into poetry and therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of thought, and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so, and that religion is our own sweet invention.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Sweet, Women, Believe

  101 Copy quote

• Anyone who survives a southern childhood has enough material to last a lifetime.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Southern, Childhood, Lasts

  54 Copy quote

• It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth

  Flannery O'Connor

  Artist, Strangeness

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.343, Macmillan

  81 Copy quote

• Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Dark, Night, Soul

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.175, Macmillan

  115 Copy quote

• 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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Fall, Thinking

  68 Copy quote

• Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Happiness, Success

  14 Copy quote

• I love a lot of people, understand none of them.

  Flannery O'Connor

  People

  7 Copy quote

• 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, Able

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.44, Macmillan

  103 Copy quote

• I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Reading, Writing, Grace

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.118, Macmillan

  39 Copy quote

• Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it

  Flannery O'Connor

  Gone, Where You Come, Where You Are

  Flannery O'Connor (2015). “Wise Blood”, p.91, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

• Writing is like giving birth to a piano sideways. Anyone who perseveres is either talented or nuts.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Nuts, Piano

  12 Copy quote

• I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, Thinking, Doubt

  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

  44 Copy quote

• In a sense sickness is a place, more instructive than a long trip to Europe, and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow. Sickness before death is a very appropriate thing and I think those who don't have it miss one of God's mercies.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Thinking, Europe, Long

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.163, Macmillan

  20 Copy quote

• There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we've got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech

  Flannery O'Connor

  Two, Southern, Quality

  95 Copy quote

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