Quotes by Flannery O'Connor

He felt he knew now what time would be like without seasons and what heat would be like without light and what man would be like without salvation. He didnt care if he never made the train and if it had not been for what suddenly caught his attention, like a cry out of the gathering dusk, he might have forgotten there was a station to go to.

In the last twenty years the colleges have been emphasizing creative writing to such an extent that you almost feel that any idiot with a nickels worth of talent can emerge from a writing class able to write a competent story. In fact, so many people can now write competent stories that the short story as a medium is in danger of dying of competence. We want competence, but competence by itself is deadly. What is needed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writing class.

Some people might enjoy drain water if they were told it was vodka.

I like to walk in the woods and see what Mother Nature is wearing.

From 15 to 18 is an age at which one is very sensitive to the sins of others, as I know from recollections of myself. At that age you don’t look for what is hidden. It is a sign of maturity not to be scandalized and to try to find explanations in charity.

He had a winning smile and it was evident that he didnt think he was any better than anybody else even though he was.

He had a look of composed dissatisfaction, as if he understood life thoroughly.

...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.

If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.

Remember what you wont get if you dont mind, her grandfather remarked.

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

And if the student finds that this is not to his taste well that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted it is being formed.

It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes.

Conviction without experiences makes for harshness.

If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time youll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.

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 am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway less burdened.

The basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.

Remember that you dont write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.