522 Quotes by 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.

I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.

The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.

The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location

Kept rattling the ice in her glass, rattling her beads, rattling her bracelet like an impatient pony jingling its harness.

Free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man.

If you live today, you breathe 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 stinkiest logical positivist you ever saw right now.

It's easier to bleed than sweat

Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are.