Flannery O'Connor

"If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival."

"Conviction without experiences makes for harshness."

"It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes."

"And if the student finds that this is not to his taste well that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted it is being formed."

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally."

"Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better."

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."

"The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself."

"I came from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation."

"If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you."

"He had measured five feet four inches of pure gamecock."

"So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence."

"It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have."

"When we get our spiritual house in order, we'll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty."

"“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”"

"My intellect is so limited, Lord, that I can only trust in You to preserve me as I should be."

"Week before last I went to Wesleyan and read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” After it I went to one of the classes where I was asked questions. There were a couple of young teachers there and one of them, an earnest type, started asking the questions. “Miss O’Connor,” he said, “why was the Misfit’s hat black?” I said most countrymen in Georgia wore black hats. He looked pretty disappointed. Then he said, “Miss O’Connor, the Misfit represents Christ, does he not?” “He does not,” I said. He looked crushed. “Well, Miss O’Connor,” he said, “what is the significance of the Misfit’s hat?” I said it was to cover his head; and after that he left me alone. Anyway, that’s what’s happening to the teaching of literature."

"I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up."

"Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them."