Flannery O'Connor Quotes - Page 7

Quotes about:

• There may never be anything new to say, but there is always a new way to say it, and since, in art, the way of saying a thing becomes a part of what is said, every work of art is unique and requires fresh attention.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Art, Philosophical, Unique

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.76, Macmillan

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• You ought to be able to discover something from your stories. If you don't, probably nobody else will.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Stories, Able, Ought

  Flannery O'Connor (2014). “Mystery and Manners”, p.60, Faber & Faber

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• People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, People, Novel

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

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• ...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Mean, Men, Doe

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.115, Macmillan

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• I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it. Nobody could then 'smile darkly and ignore the howls.' Even if there were no Church to teach me this, writing two novels would do it. I think the more you write, the less inclined you will be to rely on theories like determinism. Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Heart, Thinking

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• If it's just a symbol, then
  to hell with it !

  Flannery O'Connor

  Hell, Symbols, Ifs

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• Even a child with normal feet was in love with the world after he had got a new pair of shoes.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Children, Shoes, Feet

  Flannery O'Connor (1971). “The Complete Stories”, p.459, Macmillan

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• A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Stories, Muscles, Wells

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• If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Happiness, Survival, Routine

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• I'm going to preach there was no Fall because there was nothing to fall from, and no Redemption because there was no Fall, and no Judgment because there wasn't the first two. Nothing matters but that Jesus was a liar.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Jesus, Liars, Fall

  Flannery O'Connor (1965). “Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories”, p.27, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Home, Tired, Heart

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.47, Macmillan

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• I was a very ancient twelve; my views at that age would have done credit to a Civil War veteran. I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway, less burdened. The weight of the centuries lies on children, I'm sure of it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Children, War, Lying

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• The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Truth, Eye, Novelists

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.177, Macmillan

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• Poorly written novels--no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters--are not good in themselves and are therefore not really edifying.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Character, Matter, Behavior

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.174, Macmillan

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• Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Art, Staying, Limitation

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.171, Macmillan

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• Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Eye, Grace, Feelings

  Flannery O'Connor (1993). “"A Good Man is Hard to Find"”, p.58, Rutgers University Press

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• I don't think you should write something as long as a novel around anything that is not of the gravest concern to you and everybody else and for me this is always the conflict between an attraction for the Holy and the disbelief in it that we breathe in with the air of the times.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Thinking, Air

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• The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where the human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal through the senses with abstractions.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Perception, Fiction, Crafts

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.67, Macmillan

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• Behind the newspaper Julian was withdrawing into the inner compartment of his mind where he spent most of his time. This was a kind of mental bubble in which he established himself when he could not bear to be a part of what was going on around him. From it he could see out and judge but in it he was safe from any kind of penetration from without. It was the only place where he felt free of the general idiocy of his fellows. His mother had never entered it but from it he could see her with absolute clarity.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Mother, Judging, Mind

  Flannery O'Connor (1965). “Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories”, p.11, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing a conventional novel, and I think that the quality of the novel I write will derive precisely from the peculiarity or aloneness, if you will, of the experience I write from.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Writing, Thinking, Quality

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.10, Macmillan

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• The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Weakness, Innocence, Southerner

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.110, Macmillan

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• [Simone Weil's] life is almost a perfect blend of the Comic and the Terrible, which two things may be opposite sides of the same coin. In my own experience, everything funny I have written is more terrible than it is funny, or only funny because it is terrible, or only terrible because it is funny.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Opposites, Two, Perfect

  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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• The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Stars, Moving, Sky

  Flannery O'Connor (1965). “Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories”, p.26, Macmillan

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• Her name was Maude and she drank whisky all day from a fruit jar under the counter.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Names, Jars, Fruit

  Flannery O'Connor (2007). “Wise Blood: A Novel”, p.86, Macmillan

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• It was not right to believe anything you couldn't see or hold in your hands or test with your teeth.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, Hands, Teeth

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

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