522 Quotes by Flannery O'Connor

It is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them – in which case, if you don’t watch out, they cease to be adversaries.

I sure am sick of the Civil War.

Dear God please give me some place, no matter how small, but let me know it and keep it. If I am the one to wash the second step everyday, let me know it and let me wash it and let my heart overflow with love washing it.

And she said such strange things! To her own mother she had said – without warning “Woman! do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!” she had cried sinking down again and staring at her plate, “Malebranche was right: we are not our own light. We are not our own light!

After a while he said, “If there’s no bottom in your eyes, they hold more.

I like his eyes,” she observed, “They don’t look like they see what he’s looking at but they keep on looking.

I’m always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.

You ought to be able to discover something from your stories. If you don’t, probably nobody else will.

She had never given much thought to the devil for she felt that religion was essentially for those people who didn’t have the brains to avoid evil without it.