Quotes from Flannery O'Connor

Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.

I have what passes for an education in this day and time, but I am not deceived by it.

The Bible was the only book he read. He didn't read it often but when he did he wore his mother's glasses. They tired his eyes so that after a short time he was always obliged to stop.

Even a child with normal feet was in love with the world after he had got a new pair of shoes.

I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.

You shall know the truth, and it will make you odd.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

[To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth

I love a lot of people, understand none of them.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

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

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.

Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.

You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always 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.