Flannery O'Connor
On August 3, 1964, Flannery O'Connor died in Milledgeville, Georgia, at the age of thirty-nine. She left behind two novels, thirty-one short stories, and a body of essays composed over the course of her working life.
Born on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia, O'Connor was a United States citizen who wrote in English. Her formal education took her first to Georgia College & State University and then to the University of Iowa. She worked as a novelist, short story writer, and essayist, and also worked at times as a film screenwriter.
Her notable works include the novel Wise Blood, the novel The Violent Bear It Away, and the short story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories. Alongside these works of fiction, her output as an essayist represented a distinct strand of her writing practice, separate from her narrative work.
During her career, O'Connor received the O. Henry Award and the National Book Award. She was also honored with the Georgia Women of Achievement award. The Library of Congress catalogs her under the authorized heading "O'Connor, Flannery," a designation that anchors the archival record of her writing.
Quotes by Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor's insights on:
Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are.
If you live today, you breathe in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkiest logical positivist you ever saw right now.
Kept rattling the ice in her glass, rattling her beads, rattling her bracelet like an impatient pony jingling its harness.
The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location
The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.
I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.
Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
I do not know You, God, because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.