Quotes from Flannery O'Connor

When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville.

She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.

... the man in the violent situation reveals those qualities least dispensable in his personality, those qualities which are all he will have to take into eternity with him.

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.

Kindness and patience were always called for.

Policy and politics generally go contrary to principle.

Go warn the children of God of the terrible speed of mercy.

Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God.

Woman! Do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!

The mind serves best when it's anchored in the Word of God. There is no danger then of becoming an intellectual without integrity.

Satisfy your demand for reason but always remember that charity is beyond reason, and God can be known through charity.

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.

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.

I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear.

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

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

I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.

What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.

I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.

Christianity is a strangely cheery religion.

She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.

The basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.

I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true." May 19, 1962

To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks.