522 Quotes by Flannery O'Connor

Nothing is like it used to be, lady,” he said. “The world is almost rotten.

I don’t have a lot of time. I can give a poem a couple of lines, a short story a paragraph, and a novel a few pages, then if I can stop reading without a sense of loss, I do, and I go on to something else.

I was a very ancient twelve; my views at that age would have done credit to a Civil War veteran. I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway, less burdened. The weight of the centuries lies on children, I’m sure of it.

There is a question whether faith can or is supposed to be emotionally satisfying. I must say that the thought of everyone lolling about in an emotionally satisfying faith is repugnant to me. I believe that we are ultimately directed Godward but that this journey is often impeded by emotion.

I call myself The Misfit,” he said, “because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment.

Mr. Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again but this time he knew that there were no words in the world that could name it. He understood that it grew out of agony, which is not denied to any man and which is given in strange ways to children.

Remember that you don’t write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.

There is nothing like being pleased with your own work – and this is the best stage – before it is published and begins to be misunderstood.

In most good stories, it is the character’s personality that creates the action of the story. If you start with real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen.