Quotes from Flannery O'Connor

The trouble with you is," she said, "you sit in front of that window all the time where there's nothing to look out at. You need some inspiration and an out-let. If you would let me pull your chair around to look at the TV, you would quit thinking about morbid stuff, death and hell and judgement. My Lord.

She didn't like to admit it about her own kin, least about her own brother, but there he was—good for absolutely nothing.

I'm a member and preacher to that church where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stay's that way. Ask me about that church and I'll tell you it's the church that the blood of Jesus don't foul with redemption...Jesus was a liar.

Symbols are something [the writer] uses simply as a matter of course. You might say that theses are details that, while having their essential place in the literal level of the story, operate in depth as well as on the surface, increasing the story in every direction … the truer the symbol, the deeper it leads you, the more meaning it opens up

There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

The novelist makes his statements by selection, and if he is any good, he selects every word for a reason, every detail for a reason, every incident for a reason, and arranges them in a certain time-sequence for a reason. He demonstrates something that cannot possibly be demonstrated any other way than with a whole novel.

The novel is a more diffused form and more suited to those who like to linger along the way; it also requires a more massive energy.

A perception is not a story, and no amount of sensitivity can make a story-writer out of you if you just plain don't have a gift for telling a story.

How would he know if time was going backwards or forwards or if he was going with it?

The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it.

The old woman's three mountains were black against the dark blue sky and were visited off and on by various planets and by the moon after it had left the chickens.

There may never be anything new to say, but there is always a new way to say it.

poetry is always dependent on realism, that you have to be a realist or you can't be a poet. Mrs.

I like his eyes, she observed, They don't look like they see what he's looking at but they keep on looking.

I'm always highly 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.

There is nothing like being pleased with your own work - and this is the best stage - before it is published and begins to be misunderstood.

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.

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.

It is when the individual's faith is weak, not strong, that he will be afraid of an honest fictional representation of life; and when there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the supernatural is apt gradually to be lost.

Nobody with a good car needs to be justified

I don't want to be doomed to mediocrity in my feeling for Christ. I want to feel. I want to love. Take me, dear Lord, and set me in the direction I am to go

To his mind, an opportunity to insult a successful ape cam from the hand of Providence.

Listen here, Mr. Shiftlet, she said, sliding forward in her chair, you'd be getting a permanent house and a deep well and the most innocent girl in the world. You don't need no money. Lemme tell you something: there ain't any place in the world for a poor disabled friendless drifting man.

Mrs. May winced. She thought the word, Jesus, should be kept inside the church building like other words inside the bedroom. She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.