Flannery O'Connor Life Quotations

... the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life.

... the man in the violent situation reveals those qualities least dispensable in his personality, those qualities which are all he will have to take into eternity with him.

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

Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.

She would of been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.

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.

I doubt if the texture of Southern life is any more grotesque than that of the rest of the nation, but it does seem evident that the Southern writer is particularly adept at recognizing the grotesque; and to recognize the grotesque, you have to have some notion of what is not grotesque and why.

Southern culture has fostered a type of imagination that has been influenced by Christianity of a not too unorthodox kind and by a strong devotion to the Bible, which has kept our minds attached to the concrete and the living symbol.

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.

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