Flannery O'Connor Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

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

  Flannery O'Connor

  People

  7 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

• If we forget our past, we won't remember our future and it will be as well because we won't have one.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Past, Remember, Forget

  8 Copy quote

• I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Eye, Blessing, I Can

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.57, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• On the subject of the feminist business, I just never think...of qualities which are specifically feminine or masculine. I suppose I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non-Irksome without regard to sex. Yes and there are the Medium Irksome and the Rare Irksome.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Sex, Thinking, Class

  12 Copy quote

• Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Education, Teacher, Women

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

  12 Copy quote

• Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Doctrine, Way, Dogma

  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

  9 Copy quote

• When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Mean, Talking, Vision

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

  36 Copy quote

• I am very handy with my advice and then when anybody appears to be following it, I get frantic.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Advice, Handy, Following

  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

  10 Copy quote

• The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Looks, Fiction, Garbage

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.630, Macmillan

  103 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

• I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear.

  Flannery O'Connor

  People, Dumb, Needs

  56 Copy quote

• To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Hearing, Blind, Figures

  Flannery O'Connor (2012). “Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons”, p.117, Fantagraphics Books

  31 Copy quote

• 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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Teacher, Writing, School

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.140, Macmillan

  73 Copy quote

• There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fall, Writing, Stories

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.48, Macmillan

  12 Copy quote

• Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Faith, Believe, Literature

  26 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

• Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Sides, Belief, Secure

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

  5 Copy quote

• Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Levels, Absolutes, Relative

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.178, Macmillan

  29 Copy quote

• In yourself right now is all the place you've got.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Self Esteem, Independence, Right Now

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

  34 Copy quote

• People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Long, People

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

  38 Copy quote

• I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Humorous, Credit, Tongue

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.86, Macmillan

  57 Copy quote

• Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Light, Belief, Substitutes

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.91, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Experience, Conviction, Harshness

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.97, Macmillan

  35 Copy quote

• Unadaptability is often a virtue.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Virtue, Adaptability

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.365, Macmillan

  11 Copy quote

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