522 Quotes by Flannery O'Connor

The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot.

To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.

It began to drizzle rain and he turned on the windshield wipers; they made a great clatter like two idiots clapping in church.

There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it; and it's well to remember that the serious fiction writer always writes about the whole world.

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.

Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.

Grace changes us and change is painful".

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

She felt that she would have to be much more than just a doctor or an engineer. She would have to be a saint...