Mary Flannery O’Connor was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. Her works, usually set in the rural American South and often treating of alienation, concern the relationship between the individual and God. Inspirational Flannery O’Connor quotes will encourage growth in life, make you wiser and broaden your perspective.
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Most Famous Flannery O’Connor Quotes
It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes. Flannery O’Connor
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. Flannery O’Connor
I don’t deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it. Flannery O’Connor
She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity. Flannery O’Connor
I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best. Flannery O’Connor
Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles 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 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
I write to discover what I know. 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
I don’t deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it. Flannery O’Connor
I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I’m afraid it will not be controversial. Flannery O’Connor
Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. Flannery O’Connor
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
Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it. 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. Flannery O’Connor
You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd. Flannery O’Connor
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. Flannery O’Connor
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
Conviction without experience makes for harshness. Flannery O’Connor
All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. 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 write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say. Flannery O’Connor
I do not know You, God, because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside. Flannery O’Connor
Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Flannery O’ Connor
I don’t have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don’t know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again. Flannery O’Connor
Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better. 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
Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place. Nothing outside you can give you any place. In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got. Flannery O’Connor
I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. Flannery O’Connor
People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. 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
She would’ve been a good woman, said The Misfit, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life. Flannery O’Connor
The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention. Flannery O’Connor
There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence. Flannery O’Connor
The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode. Flannery O’Connor
In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got. Flannery O’Connor
Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not. Flannery O’Connor
If you don’t hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you. Flannery O’Connor
When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville. Flannery O’Connor
I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing. Flannery O’Connor
There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. Flannery O’Connor
She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick. Flannery O’Connor
The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence. 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
The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live. Flannery O’Connor
I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ centered, it is most certainly Christ haunted. 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
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
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. Flannery O’Connor
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
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
He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery. Flannery O’Connor
I write to discover what I know. Flannery O’Connor
Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic. Flannery O’Connor
I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say. Flannery O’Connor
Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not. Flannery O’Connor
The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention. Flannery O’Connor
I love a lot of people, understand none of them. Flannery O’Connor
People without hope not only don’t write novels but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. Flannery O’Connor
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
Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. Flannery O’Connor
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
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
Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn’t try to write fiction. It’s not a grand enough job for you. Flannery O’Connor
Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. Flannery O’Connor
You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission. Flannery O’Connor
Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it. Flannery O’Connor
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
You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd. Flannery O’Connor
The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience. Flannery O’Connor
There are all kinds of truth but behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there’s no truth. Flannery O’Connor
The Catholic novelist in the South will see many distorted images of Christ, but he will certainly feel that a distorted image of Christ is better than no image at all. I think he will feel a good deal more kinship with backwoods prophets and shouting fundamentalists than he will with those politer elements for whom the supernatural is an embarrassment and for whom religion has become a department of sociology or culture or personality development. Flannery O’Connor
To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self knowledge is humility. 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
Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better. Flannery O’Connor
There are all kinds of truth but behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there’s no truth. Flannery O’Connor
She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick. Flannery O’Connor
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
