Flannery O'Connor

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

"I write to discover what I know."

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."

"The grotesque can serve all our purposes."

"Redemption is costly."

"A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way."

"The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the disciplined mind."

"I am no friend of the so-called 'critical spirit' which is not critical at all."

"You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd."

"There is no such thing as a convenient place to pray."

"I often write stories that appear to have no message or meaning because the message is the meaning."

"Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn the dust, you scorn everything human."

"The problem is how to make the good evil look evil to people who can't see anything wrong with what they're doing."

"In the absence of faith, we govern by tendencies."

"A writer is someone who has taught their mind to work in imagination."

"The more a man examines his beliefs, the more he comes to resemble a heretic."

"If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have children."

"Violence is a force which can be used for good."

"The Southerner is the most free perhaps of all people in his use of the absurd."

"To understand a country you must understand its literature."

"A writer who aims at producing the beautiful by declaration instead of by creation is not operating on anything."

"I don't believe in God, I know God."

"The writer is only free when he can tell the truth."

"What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket."

"The eye is the first thing the reader notices and its condition is usually despicable."

"You don't have to say anything that isn't literally true, but the truth can be stretched."

"If you want to write, you have to be willing to be alone a lot."

"She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every day of her life."

"The fiction writer is presenting life as she finds it to be worth living."

"I am interested in the lines of spiritual choice and will so that I can find ground to stand on in these books."