Quotes from Frank O'Connor

The short story is the art form that deals with the individual when there is no longer a society to absorb him, and when he is compelled to exist, as it were, by his own inner light.

Even if there were only two men left in the world and both of them saints they wouldn't be happy. One them would be bound to try and improve the other. That is the nature of things.

No man is as anti-feminist as a really feminine woman.

I was a great believer in hot buttered toast at all hours of the day.

a grin that wasn't natural, and that combined in a strange way affection and arrogance, the arrogance of the idealist who doesn't realize how easily he can be fooled.

But, Mummy, couldn't God make another wars, but bad people. Oh! I said. I was disappointed about that. I began to think that God wasn't quite what he was cracked up to be.

And what's a-trouble to you, Jackie? Father, I said, feeling I might as well get it over while I had him in good humour, I had it all arranged to kill my grandmother. He seemed a bit shaken by that, all right, because he said nothing for quite a while. My goodness, he said at last, that'd be a shocking thing to do. What put that into your head? Father, I said, feeling very sorry for myself, she's an awful woman.

The more loss we feel, the more grateful we should be for whatever it was we had to lose. It means that we had something worth grieving for . The ones I'm sorry for are the ones that go through life not knowing what grief is.

I was always a great believer in buttered toast.

A man and woman in search of something are always blown apart, but it's the same wind that blows them.

I suppose we all have our little hiding-hole if the truth was known, but as small as it is, the whole world is in it, and bit by bit grows on us again till the day You find us out.

Gravity doesn't just fight expansion," she pleaded. "Gravity defeats chaos, from time to time. It assembles worlds and life and thought. Gravity is the watchmaker, and it feels like it has will, purpose. It's the shape-memory of the universe, trying to pull itself back into a perfect singularity. It's futile, ultimately, but every now and then it creates a perfect node. An intellect. A true wonder.

So Father Ring went off in the lofty mood of a man who has defended a principle at a great sacrifice to himself, but that very night he began to brood and he continued to brood till that sickly looking voluptuary of a ten-shilling note took on all the radiance and charm of a virgin of seventeen.

Tom looked more and more like a rabbi. As is the way of men of character in provincial towns, he tended to become a collection of mannerisms, a caricature of himself.

But my dear young lady, he said offering a cigarette, who ever said I have a poor opinion of women? On the contrary, I have a very high opinion of women, and the more I see of them the more I like them.

Choice was an illusion. Seeing that a man can never really get out of jail, the great thing is to ensure that he gets into the biggest possible one with the largest possible range of modern amenities.

No man is ever as anti-feminist as a really feminine woman.

Even if there were only two men left in the world and both of them saints they wouldn't be happy. One them would be bound to try and improve the other. That is the nature of things.