The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. - Flannery O'Connor
Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them. - Flannery O'Connor
It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have. - Flannery O'Connor
He had measured five feet four inches of pure gamecock. - Flannery O'Connor
Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn't stifle enough of them. - Flannery O'Connor
If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now. - Flannery O'Connor
Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you. - Flannery O'Connor
If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you. - Flannery O'Connor
The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at truth. - Flannery O'Connor
I came from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. - Flannery O'Connor
You know," Daddy said, "it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything! - Flannery O'Connor
I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. - Flannery O'Connor
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles 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
So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence. - Flannery O'Connor
The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.(August 9, 1955) - Flannery O'Connor
My intellect is so limited, Lord, that I can only trust in You to preserve me as I should be. - Flannery O'Connor
Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better. - Flannery O'Connor
Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never 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... In yourself right now is all the place you've got. - 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
When we get our spiritual house in order, we'll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty. - Flannery O'Connor