Quotes from Flannery O'Connor

Mrs. May winced. She thought the word Jesus should be kept inside the church building like other words inside the bedroom.

From 15 to 18 is an age at which one is very sensitive to the sins of others, as I know from recollections of myself. At that age you don't look for what is hidden. It is a sign of maturity not to be scandalized and to try to find explanations in charity.

June Star said her hair was naturally curly.

The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself.

Meeks was telling him about the value of work. He said that it had been his personal experience that if you wanted to get ahead, you had to work. He said this was the law of life and it was no way to get around it because it was inscribed on the human heart like love thy neighbour. He said these two laws were the team that worked together to make the world go round and that any individual who wanted to be a success and win the pursuit of happiness, that was all he needed to know.

Wait here, wait here! he cried and jumped up and began to run for help toward a cluster of lights he saw in the distance ahead of him. Help, help! he shouted, but his voice was thin, scarcely a thread of sound. The lights drifted farther away the faster he ran and his feet moved numbly as if they carried him nowhere. The tide of darkness seemed to sweep him back to her, postponing from moment to moment his entry into the world of guilt and sorrow.

He had learned enough to hate the destruction that had to come and not all that was going to be destroyed.

The reader may not see [these meanings], but they have their effect on him nonetheless. This is the way the modern novelist sinks, or hides his theme

Some people might enjoy drain water if they were told it was vodka.

there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip.

A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more.

And as for that strangeness in your gut, that comes from you, not the Lord. When you were a child you had worms. As likely as not you have them again.

If a writer is any good, what he makes will have its source in a realm much larger than that which his conscious mind can encompass and will always be a greater surprise to him than it can ever be to his reader.

I am the menial, at the beck and squawk of any feathered worthy who wants service.

Hazel Motes sat at a forward angel on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car.

You can choose what you write but you can't choose what you make live.

time goes forward, it don't go backward and unless you take what's offered you, you'll find yourself out in the cold pitch black and just how far do you think you'll get?

Did you see the picture of Roy Rogers's horse attending a church service in Pasadena? I forgot whether his name was Tex or Trigger but he was dressed fit to kill and looked like he was having a good time. He doubled the usual attendance.

The formality that is left in the South now is quite dead and done for of course.

With grown people, a road led either to heaven or hell, but with children there were always stops along the way where their attention could be turned with a trifle.

The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot.

He was singing a hillbilly song that sounded half like a love song and half like a hymn.

Early in 1955 Flannery completed work on her second book, a collection of these stories which she entitled A Good Man Is Hard to Find. In January we sent it to press, having set publication for June. I remember our amusement at Evelyn Waugh's reaction to the advance proofs we sent him: "If these stories are in fact the work of a young lady, they are indeed remarkable.

In the name of social order, liberal thought, and sometimes even Christianity, the novelist is asked to be the handmaid of his age.