Quotes by "Flannery O'Connor"

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

She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.

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

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.

Conviction without experiences makes for harshness.

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

The basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.

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. Where is there a place for you to be? No place... Nothing outside you can give you any place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got.

Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.

Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.

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.

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

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

Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me.

If you live today, you breath 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 stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.

Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look.

He had a look of composed dissatisfaction, as if he understood life thoroughly.

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

I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is that there is no truth... No truth behind all truths is what I and this church preach! Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got.

The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at truth.