Flannery O'Connor Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• There is a question whether faith can or is supposed to be emotionally satisfying. I must say that the thought of everyone lolling about in an emotionally satisfying faith is repugnant to me. I believe that we are ultimately directed Godward but that this journey is often impeded by emotion

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, Journey, Emotion

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

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• I spend three hours a day writing and the rest of my day getting over it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Three, Hours

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• It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Success, Failure, Novelists

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.306, Macmillan

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• Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God.

  Flannery O'Connor

  God, Way, Limits

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.162, Macmillan

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• If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fighting, Nihilism, Church

  "This Lonesome Place" by Hilton Als, www.newyorker.com. January 29, 2001.

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• The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Reality, Mind, Fiction

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.79, Macmillan

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• The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled.

  Flannery O'Connor

  White, Tree, Silver

  Flannery O'Connor (2016). “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, p.5, Faber & Faber

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• If there were no hell, we would be like the animals. No hell, no dignity.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Animal, Would Be, Criminal Mind

  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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• When you leave a man alone with his Bible and the Holy Ghost inspires him, he's going to be a Catholic one way or another, even though he knows nothing about the visible church. His kind of Christianity may not be socially desirable, but will be real in the sight of God.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Real, Men, Sight

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• I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Irritation, Literature, Emotion

  Flannery O'Connor (2012). “Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons”, p.112, Fantagraphics Books

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• She would of been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Good Woman, Misfits

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• All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Character, Thinking, People

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.275, Macmillan

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• Grace changes us and change is painful".

  Flannery O'Connor

  Southern, Grace, Painful

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• 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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Stories, Way, Said

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

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• We lost our innocence in the Fall, and our turn to it is through the Redemption which was brought about by Christ's death and by our slow participation in it. Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence, which strongly suggests its opposite.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fall, Reality, Opposites

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• The two worst sins of bad taste in fiction are pornography and sentimentality. One is too much sex and the other too much sentiment.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Sex, Two, Fiction

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• When the peacock has presented his back, the spectator will usually begin to walk around him to get a front view; but the peacock will continue to turn so that no front view is possible. The thing to do then is to stand still and wait until it pleases him to turn. When it suits him, the peacock will face you. Then you will see in a green-bronze arch around him a galaxy of gazing, haloed suns.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Views, Waiting, Gazing

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• I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, People, Crafts

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.79, Macmillan

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• There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Running, Long, People

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.192, Macmillan

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• I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Truth, Atheism, Literature

  1952 HazelMotes. Wise Blood, ch.10.

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• It is a sign of maturity... to find explanations in charity.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Maturity, Southern, Charity

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• 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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Childhood, Littles, Information

  Flannery O'Connor (2014). “Mystery and Manners”, p.49, Faber & Faber

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• If you're a Catholic you believe what the Church teaches and the climate makes no difference.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, Differences, Catholic

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.103, Macmillan

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• ... Simone Weil is a mystery that should keep us all humble, and I need it more than most. Also she's the example of the religious consciousness without a religion which maybe sooner or later I will be able to write about.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Religious, Writing, Humble

  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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• There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.

  Flannery O'Connor

  House, Yards, Biographies

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.290, Macmillan

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