522 Quotes by Flannery O'Connor

Sin is a great thing as long as it’s recognized. It leads a good many people to God who wouldn’t get there otherwise.

What is needed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writing class.

The thing for you to do is write something with a delayed reaction like those capsules that take an hour to melt in your stomach. In this way, it could be performed on Monday and not make them vomit until Wednesday, by which time they would not be sure who was to blame. This is the principle I operate under and I find it works very well.

He had learned enough to hate the destruction that had to come and not all that was going to be destroyed.

Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.

There were two round photographs of an old man and woman with collapsed mouths and another picture of a man whose eyebrows dashed out of two bushes of hair and clashed in a heap on the bridge of his nose; the rest of his face stuck out like a bare cliff to fall from.

Do you have any books the faculty doesn’t particularly recommend?

The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it.

I do not know You, God, because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.