Flannery O'ConnorThe writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location. ✨ Flannery O'Connor (1969). Mystery and Ma… ▶371Time
Flannery O'ConnorThe basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode. ✨ Flannery O'Connor (1969). Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, p.65, Macmillan361Truth
Flannery O'ConnorIt is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth ✨ Flannery O'Connor (1988). The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, p.343, Macmillan372Truth
Flannery O'ConnorIf you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you. ✨ Flannery O'Connor (2015). Wise Blood, p.92, Faber & Faber351Reflection
Flannery O'ConnorFar be it for me to have worked it out in any abstract way. I don't know why the bull and Mrs. May have to die, or why Mr. Fortune and Mary Fortune: I just feel in my bones that t… ▶373Death
Flannery O'ConnorIt is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes. ✨ Flannery O'Connor (1988). The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, p.306, Macmillan341Humanity
Flannery O'ConnorLet 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 c… ▶341Thought
Flannery O'ConnorThose who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute. ✨ Flannery O'Connor (1969). Myster… ▶374Philosophy
Flannery O'ConnorThere's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you… ▶331Thought
Flannery O'ConnorThe grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was… ▶375Thought
Flannery O'ConnorI know that the writer does call up the general and maybe the essential through the particular, but this general and essential is still deeply embedded in mystery. It is not answe… ▶353Death
Flannery O'ConnorHarcourt sent my book to Evelyn Waugh and his comment was: “If this is really the unaided work of a young lady, it is a remarkable product.” My mother was vastly insulted. She put… ▶343Reading
Flannery O'ConnorI don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it. ✨ Flannery O'Connor (1988). The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, p.86, Macm… ▶332Death
Flannery O'ConnorYou shall know the truth, and it will make you odd.343Truth
Flannery O'ConnorMost of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow.376Humor
Flannery O'ConnorHe and the girl had almost nothing to say to each other. One thing he did say was, 'I ain't got any tattoo on my back.' 'What you got on it?' the girl said. 'My shirt,' Parker sai… ▶354Hope
Flannery O'ConnorIt is a sign of maturity... to find explanations in charity.354Politics
Flannery O'ConnorWriting a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. ✨ Flannery O'Connor (1969). Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, p.77,… ▶322LifeReading
Flannery O'ConnorA working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him. ✨ Flannery O'Connor (1988). The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, p.163, Macmillan311Politics
Flannery O'ConnorI write to discover what I know.311Truth
Flannery O'ConnorOnly if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe. ✨ Flannery O'Connor (1969). Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, p.167, Macmillan367Humor
Flannery O'ConnorWhen 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 po… ▶378Time
Flannery O'ConnorEither practice restraint or be prepared for crowding301Philosophy
Flannery O'ConnorWhen I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathe News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point i… ▶357Life
Flannery O'ConnorThere's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. ✨ Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose The Nature and Aims of Fiction (1969)357Humor
Flannery O'ConnorThere is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for … ▶324Time
Flannery O'ConnorI use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear.335Humanity
Flannery O'ConnorNo art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made. ✨ Flannery O'Connor (… ▶379Philosophy
Flannery O'ConnorIn the first place you can be so absolutely honest and so absolutely wrong at the same time that I think it is better to be a combination of cautious and polite ✨ Flannery O… ▶291ThoughtTimeTruth
Flannery O'ConnorPurity strikes me as the most mysterious of the virtues and the more I think about it the less I know about it. ✨ Flannery O'Connor (1988). Collected Works, New York, NY : L… ▶368Thought
