Quotes by Flannery O'Connor

We live in an unbelieving age but one which is markedly and lopsidedly spiritual. There is one type of modern man who recognizes spirit in himself but who fails to recognize a being outside himself whom he can adore as Creator and Lord; consequently he has become his own ultimate concern. He says with Swinburne, Glory to man in the highest, for he is the master of things, or with Steinbeck, In the end was the word and the word was with men. For him, man has his own natural spirit of courage and dignity and pride and must consider it a point of honor to be satisfied with this. There is another type of modern man who recognizes a divine being not himself, but who does not believe that this being can be known anagogically or defined dogmatically or received sacramentally. Spirit and matter are separated for him. Man wanders about, caught in a maze of guilt he cant identify, trying to reach a God he cant approach, a God powerless to approach him. And there is another type of modern man who can neither believe nor contain himself in unbelief and who searches desperately, feeling about in all experience for the lost God.

It is when the individuals faith is weak, not strong, that he will be afraid of an honest fictional representation of life; and when there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the supernatural is apt gradually to be lost.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. Im always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and its very shocking to the system.

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 of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.

Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldnt try to write fiction. Its 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 it is good in itself.

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 an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow.

Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesnt 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 dont 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 block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them Hazel Motes integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazels integrity lies in his not being able to. Does ones integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.

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 a good deal more kinship with backwoods prophets and shouting fundamentalists than he will with those politer elements for whom the supernatural is an embarrassment and for whom religion has become a department of sociology or culture or personality development.

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

Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.

A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him.

If you want to get anywhere in religion, you got to keep it sweet.

She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything.

The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it.