Flannery O'Connor

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

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”

“I write to discover what I know.”

“A good man is hard to find.”

“The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.”

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

“I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.”

“Conviction without experience makes for harshness.”

“The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.”

“To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.”

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.”

“Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.”

“The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point.”

“I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.”

“Faith is what you have in the absence of evidence.”

“Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.”

“There is no excuse for bad manners, except final convulsions.”

“The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where human perception begins.”

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”

“Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”