Quotes by Flannery O'Connor

About Flannery O'Connor:

Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, she wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters. Her writing also reflected her own Roman Catholic faith, and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics.
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The world was made for the dead. Think of all the dead there are...There's a million times more dead than living and the dead are dead a million times longer than the living are alive...

Flannery O'Connor

The boy knew that escaping school was the surest sign of his election.

Flannery O'Connor

You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.

Flannery O'Connor

Meeks was telling him about the value of work. He said that it had been his personal experience that if you wanted to get ahead, you had to work. He said this was the law of life and it was no way to get around it because it was inscribed on the huma...

Flannery O'Connor

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place. Nothing outside you can give you any place," he said. "You...

Flannery O'Connor

That's the trouble with you preachers," he said. "You've all got too good to believe in anything," and he drove off with a look of disgust and righteousness.

Flannery O'Connor

Leave!’ Hazel Motes cried. ‘Go ahead and leave! The truth don’t matter to you. Listen,’ he said, pointing his finger at the rest of them, ‘the truth don’t matter to you. If Jesus had redeemed you, what difference would it make to you? You...

Flannery O'Connor

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.

Flannery O'Connor

In yourself right now is all the place you've got.

Flannery O'Connor

Hazel Motes sat at a forward angel on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car.

Flannery O'Connor

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

Flannery O'Connor

When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing yo...

Flannery O'Connor

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it

Flannery O'Connor

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

Flannery O'Connor

It's easier to bleed than sweat, Mr. Motes.

Flannery O'Connor

I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is that there is no truth... No truth behind all truths is what I and this church preach! Where you come from is gone, wher...

Flannery O'Connor

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Flannery O'Connor

I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.

Flannery O'Connor

Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

Flannery O'Connor

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

Flannery O'Connor

When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.

Flannery O'Connor

Author Bio

  • NameFlannery O'Connor
  • DescriptionAmerican novelist, short story writer
  • BornMarch 25, 1925
  • DiedAugust 3, 1964
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist; Essayist
  • WorksWise Blood; The Violent Bear It Away; A Good Man Is Hard To Find
  • AwardsNational Book Award