O’connor is one of the most celebrated and influential authors of the twentieth century, and her writing continues to be read and studied today. Her works are celebrated for their insight into human nature, their dark humor, and their exploration of morality. From her classic short stories to her timeless novels, flannery oconnor quotes provide powerful and thought-provoking insights into the human condition.
Flannery O’connor Quotes About Writing And Art
🌐 “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.” ― Flannery O’Connor
“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.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “I write to discover what I know.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “People without hope not only don’t write novels but what is more to the point, they don’t read them.” ― Flannery O’Connor
Flannery O’connor Quotes About Truth And Conviction
🌐 “There are all kinds of truth … but behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there’s no truth.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility.” ― Flannery O’Connor
“The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “Conviction without experience makes for harshness.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” ― Flannery O’Connor
Flannery O’connor Quotes About Faith, Beliefs, And God
🌐 “The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “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.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “Faith comes and goes. It rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is just as presumptuous to think that unbelief will.” ― Flannery O’Connor
“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.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “Satisfy your demand for reason but always remember that charity is beyond reason, and God can be known through charity.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “For me, it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws. I am always astonished at the emphasis the Church puts on the body. It is not the soul she says that will rise but the body, glorified.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “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.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.” ― Flannery O’Connor
🌐 “Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.” ― Flannery O’Connor
Best Flannery O’connor Quotes
🌐 “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 writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.”
🌐 “Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do.”
“I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.”
🌐 “To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks.”
🌐 “It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth.”
🌐 “Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you.”
🌐 “I write to discover what I know.”
🌐 “When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville.”
🌐 “I don’t deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.”
🌐 “I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I’m afraid it will not be controversial.”
🌐 “The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.”
🌐 “A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.”
🌐 “The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.”
🌐 “Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.”
🌐 “In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.”
🌐 “Nothing is like it used to be, lady,’ he said. ‘The world is almost rotten.”
Famous Flannery O’connor Quotes
🌐 “The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe.”
🌐 “Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me.”
🌐 “A God you understood would be less than yourself.”
🌐 “Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.”
🌐 “Today novels are considered to be entirely concerned with the social or economic or psychological forces that they will by necessity exhibit, or with those details of daily life that are for the good novelist only means to some deeper end.”
🌐 “People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them.”
🌐 “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
🌐 “When a reader 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.”
🌐 “The straightforward manner is seldom equal to the complications of the good subject. There may never be anything new to say, but there is always a new way to say it, and since, in art, the way of saying a thing becomes a part of what is said, every work of art is unique and requires fresh attention.”
🌐 “The modern hero is the outsider. His experience is rootless. He can go anywhere.”
🌐 “The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character.”
🌐 “The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence.”
🌐 “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”
Flannery O’connor Quotes About Love And Artists
🌐 “She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr.”
🌐 “The scientist has the habit of science; the artist, the habit of art.”
🌐 “The reality of death has come upon us and a consciousness of the power of God has broken our complacency like a bullet in the side. A sense of the dramatic, of the tragic, of the infinite, has descended upon us, filling us with grief, but even above grief, wonder. Our plans were so beautifully laid out, ready to be carried to action, but with magnificent certainty God laid them aside and said, ‘You have forgotten – Mine?'”
🌐 “Conviction without experience makes for harshness.”
🌐 “The artist uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees.”
🌐 “To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.”
🌐 “Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.”
Final Thoughts
Flannery o’connor quotes is that they are insightful and thought-provoking. Her words often challenge readers to think about life in a different light and her unique perspective on the world is inspiring. Her writings are filled with wisdom, humor, and a unique insight into human nature that make them a valuable asset to literature.