Flannery O'Connor

“The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.” (August 9, 1955)”

“When there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the spiritual is apt gradually to be lost.”

“It does not take much to make us realize what fools we are, but the little it takes is long in coming.”

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

“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 stays that way.”

“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.”

“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....”

“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. The reader...”

“Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.”

“Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them.”

“There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless...”

“I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil. I have also found that what I write is read by...”

“Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn't stifle enough of them.”

“We are now living in an age which doubts both fact and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and judge.”

“...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 again.”

“Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling blo...”

“The isolated imagination is easily corrupted by theory, but the writer inside his community seldom has such a problem.”

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

“The Catholic novelist in the South will see many distorted images of Christ, but he will certainly feel that a distorted image of Christ is better than no image at all. I think he will feel...”

“Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing.”