Flannery O'Connor Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• I am no disbeliever in spiritual purpose and no vague believer. I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in relation to that.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Spiritual, Mean

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.32, Macmillan

  36 Copy quote

• I am tired of reading reviews that call A Good Man brutal and sarcastic. The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism.... when I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Sarcastic, Reading

  22 Copy quote

• Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Fall, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• Once the process [of conversion] is begun and continues...you are continually turning inward toward God and away from your own egocentricity...you have to see this selfish side of yourself in order to turn away from it. I measure God by everything I am not. I begin with that.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Faith, Selfish, Order

  63 Copy quote

• Policy and politics generally go contrary to principle.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Principles, Politics, Policy

  6 Copy quote

• In the first place you can be so absolutely honest and so absolutely wrong at the same time that I think it is better to be a combination of cautious and polite

  Flannery O'Connor

  Thinking, Firsts, Honest

  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

  7 Copy quote

• Every morning between 9 and 12 I go to my room and sit before a piece of paper. Many times, I just sit for three hours with no ideas coming to me. But I know one thing. If an idea does come between 9 and 12 I am there ready for it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Morning, Ideas, Doe

  7 Copy quote

• In most good stories, it is the character's personality that creates the action of the story. If you start with real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Real, Character, Personality

  6 Copy quote

• A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Devil, Wells, Resisting

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

  28 Copy quote

• The mind serves best when it's anchored in the Word of God. There is no danger then of becoming an intellectual without integrity.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Integrity, Intellectual, Mind

  7 Copy quote

• It is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them - in which case, if you don't watch out, they cease to be adversaries.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Real, People, Watches

  6 Copy quote

• The basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Experience, Humans, Limitation

  Flannery O'Connor (2014). “Mystery and Manners”, p.74, Faber & Faber

  9 Copy quote

• Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Real, Reflection, Expression

  7 Copy quote

• One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present reality is the Incarnation, and nobody believes in the Incarnation; that is, nobody in your audience. My audience are the people who think God is dead. At least these are the people I am conscious of writing for.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Believe, Writing

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.92, Macmillan

  21 Copy quote

• We are not judged by what we are basically. We are judged by how hard we use what we have been given. Success means nothing to the Lord.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Mean, Use, Lord

  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

• Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Character, Ideas

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.363, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• Sickness is a place, ... and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Sickness, Company

  29 Copy quote

• ...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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, Struggle, Suffering

  11 Copy quote

• Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Smart, Book, Criticism

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.407, Macmillan

  16 Copy quote

• Satisfy your demand for reason but always remember that charity is beyond reason, and God can be known through charity.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Charity, Demand, Remember

  5 Copy quote

• There are some of us who have to pay for our faith every step of the way and who have to work out dramatically what it would be like without it and if being without it would be ultimately possible or not.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Work Out, Would Be, Pay

  11 Copy quote

• To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Views, Too Much

  13 Copy quote

• She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Saint, Martyr, Ifs

  Flannery O'Connor (1971). “The Complete Stories”, p.243, Macmillan

  16 Copy quote

• For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws. I am always astonished at the emphasis the Church puts on the body. It is not the soul she says that will rise but the body, glorified.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Law, Soul, Church

  9 Copy quote

• St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Country, Father, Past

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

  31 Copy quote

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