Flannery O'Connor Quotes - Page 6

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• Success means being heard and don't stand there and tell me that you are indifferent to being heard. You may write for the joy of it, but the act of writing is not complete in itself. It has to end in its audience.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Mean, Joy

  9 Copy quote

• In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Writing, Moral Judgement

  9 Copy quote

• I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Life, Success, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Peculiar, Location, Problem

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.59, Macmillan

  21 Copy quote

• I write to discover what I know.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Knows

  5 Copy quote

• The Church's stand on birth control is the most absolutely spiritual of all her stands and with all of us being materialists at heart, there is little wonder that it causes unease. I wish various fathers would quit trying to defend it by saying that the world can support 40 billion. I will rejoice the day when they say: This is right whether we all rot on top of each other or not, dear children, as we certainly may. Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Spiritual, Children, Father

  5 Copy quote

• I have what passes for an education in this day and time, but I am not deceived by it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Deceived, This Day

  4 Copy quote

• At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Despair, Age, Literature

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.159, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• The old woman was the kind who would not cut down a large old tree because it was a large old tree.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Hilarious, Cutting, Tree

  Flannery O'Connor (1971). “The Complete Stories”, p.520, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery; that it has, for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Catholic, Mind

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.146, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• Christianity is a strangely cheery religion.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christianity, Theologian

  4 Copy quote

• Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Deals

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.342, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• The dead don't bother with particulars.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Death, Bother

  Flannery O'Connor (1971). “The Complete Stories”, p.297, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• There was a time when the average reader read a novel simply for the moral he could get out of it, and however na?ve that may have been, it was a good deal less na?ve than some of the limited objectives he has now. Today novels are considered to be entirely concerned with the social or economic or psychological forces that they will by necessity exhibit, or with those details of daily life that are for the good novelist only means to some deeper end.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Book, Mean, Average

  1960 'Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction'. Paper read at Wesleyan College, Fall.

  16 Copy quote

• Dear God, I don't want to have invented my faith to satisfy my weakness. I don't want to have created God to my own image as they're so fond of saying. Please give me the necessary grace, oh Lord, and please don't let it be as hard to get as Kafka made it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Giving, Grace, Weakness

  6 Copy quote

• When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Stories, States, Theme

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

  4 Copy quote

• Tennessee's a hillbilly dumping ground, and Georgia's a lousy state too.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Tennessee, Georgia, Hillbilly

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Religious, Writing, Men

  6 Copy quote

• When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.143, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• The life you save may very well be your own.

  Flannery O'Connor

  May, Wells

  9 Copy quote

• I write any sort of rubbish which will cover the main outlines of the story, then I can begin to see it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Stories, Rubbish

  4 Copy quote

• Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Christian, Writing, Ideas

  5 Copy quote

• I don’t want any of this artificial superficial feeling stimulated by the choir. Today I have proved myself a glutton—​for Scotch oatmeal cookies and erotic thought. There is nothing left to say of me.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Scotch, Oatmeal, Erotic

  7 Copy quote

• The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at truth.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Truth Is, Used, Distortion

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• 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.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Drama, Soul, Littles

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

  5 Copy quote

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