Quotes from Flannery O'Connor

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle 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.

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.

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.

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.

The novel is an art form and when you use it for anything other than art, you pervert it…. If you manage to use it successfully for social, religious, or other purposes, it is because you make it art first.

I have settled, in short, from reading my own writings, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.

I preach that there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.

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 bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

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

The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at truth.

The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.

I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.

When using dialect, use it lightly. A dialect word here and there is enough. All you want to do is suggest. Never let it call attention to itself.

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

Conviction without experiences makes for harshness.

To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life, and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.

I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.

I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.

I do not know You God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.

I never understand how writers can succumb to vanity - what you work the hardest on is usually the worst.

Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.

No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made.

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored.