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Quotes by Flannery O'Connor


The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
– Flannery O'Connor
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
Conviction without experience makes for harshness.
– Flannery O'Connor
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
I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.
– Flannery O'Connor
I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.
– Flannery O'Connor
I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.
– Flannery O'Connor
I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.
– Flannery O'Connor
It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes.
– Flannery O'Connor
It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.
– Flannery O'Connor
Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.
– Flannery O'Connor
The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.
– Flannery O'Connor
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
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.
– Flannery O'Connor
To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.
– Flannery O'Connor
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
Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.
– Flannery O'Connor
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