Flannery O'Connor

"The writer should never be ashamed of staring at the grotesque for it is the gateway to the real."

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

"I write to discover what I believe."

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My answer is always the same: 'they don't stifle enough of them.'"

"The novelist with Christian concerns will find in the vision of the Christian faith something which will be a novel in itself."

"A good man is hard to find."

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

"The old lady's head cleared for an instant and she realized, strangely, that this would be her last act on earth."

"I am interested in the old lady in the story because she is an old lady, because what happens to her is significant."

"Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction at all."

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

"I think of my characters as being created by God, not by me."

"The kind of evil I am writing about is very much a modern experience."

"If there were no Redemption, life would be no better than a dog's life."

"A person who is writing a story has to make up his mind what the story is about."

"You don't have to say words out loud to say them."

"It takes some effort to live in the present moment."

"The fact of the matter is that salvation is a hard nut to crack."

"I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace."

"The Church isn't the old lady in the story. The old lady is the Church."

"My audience is the people who think God is dead."

"I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best."

"The prophet is not a popular character, and on occasion he can be rude."

"To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life."

"People without hope do not write novels."

"The novelist is an observer of life but he is more than that—he is a judge of it."

"The reason for my extreme diligence is that I have a great deal of difficulty in seeing anything at all."

"The creative action is first within and then without."

"There is someone in every class who wants to argue with you about every statement you make."

"I have never been anywhere that I came away from without some impression that was going to be useful to me in my work."