Home The Mine of Useless Information - everything you never needed to know!

Flannery O'Connor Quotes

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle 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."

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

"There's many a bestseller 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."

"All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal."

"I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial."

"Conviction without experience makes for harshness."

"It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have."

"Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers."

"When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business."

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

"I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one."

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

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

© 2006 The Mine of Useless Information