Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor
Mary Flannery O'Connorwas an American writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, she wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters. Her writing also reflected her own Roman Catholic faith and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics. Her posthumously-compiled Complete Stories won the 1972 U.S. National Book...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 March 1925
CitySavannah, GA
CountryUnited States of America
Faith comes and goes. It rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is just as presumptuous to think that unbelief will.
The old woman was the kind who would not cut down a large old tree because it was a large old tree.
[To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .
Sickness is a place, ... and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow.
Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.
I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.
Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are
It is a sign of maturity... to find explanations in charity.
If it's just a symbol, then to hell with it !
Christianity is a strangely cheery religion.
Nothing needs to happen to a writer’s life after they are 20. By then they’ve experienced more than enough to last their creative life.
Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.
... the novelist is bound by the reasonable possibilities, not the probabilities, of his culture.
Elizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.