522 Quotes by Flannery O'Connor

Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.

At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.

To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.

The two worst sins of bad taste in fiction are pornography and sentimentality. One is too much sex and the other too much sentiment.

I love a lot of people, understand none of them...

Go warn the children of God of the terrible speed of mercy,

There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells.

I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it. Nobody could then 'smile darkly and ignore the howls.' Even if there were no Church to teach me this, writing two novels would do it. I think the more you write, the less inclined you will be to rely on theories like determinism. Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge.

Tennessee's a hillbilly dumping ground, and Georgia's a lousy state too.