|
a8cf7c9
|
One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present reality is the Incarnation, and nobody believes in the Incarnation; that is, nobody in your audience. My audience are the people who think God is dead. At least these are the people I am conscious of writing for.
|
|
flannery-o-connor
the-incarnation
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
581d8bc
|
Unless we are willing to accept our artists as they are, the answer to the question, "Who speaks for America today?" will have to be: the advertising agencies. They are entirely capable of showing us our unparalleled prosperity and our almost classless society, and no one has ever accused them of not being affirmative. Where the artist is still trusted, he will not be looked to for assurance. Those who believe that art proceeds from a healt..
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
3f07265
|
The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is a..
|
|
words
interpretation
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
3c42db2
|
I couldn't make any judgment on the Summa, except to say this: I read it for about twenty minutes every night before I go to bed. If my mother were to come in during this process and say, 'Turn off that light. It's late,' I with a lifted finger and broad bland beatific expression, would reply, 'On the contrary, I answer that the light, being eternal and limitless, cannot be turned off. Shut your eyes,' or some such thing.
|
|
summa-theologicae
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
27fb669
|
no one can be an atheist who does not know all things. Only God is an atheist. The devil is the greatest believer and he has his reasons.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
08cbc27
|
Two people can remain "in love"-- a phrase made practically useless by stinking romanticism--only if their common desire for each other unites in a greater desire for God."
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
06a7df6
|
Harcourt sent my book to Evelyn Waugh and his comment was: "If this is really the unaided work of a young lady, it is a remarkable product." My mother was vastly insulted. She put the emphasis on if and lady. Does he suppose you're not a lady? she says."
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
3a08f04
|
Woman! do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
036044a
|
Parker sat for a long time on the ground in the alley behind the pool hall, examining his soul. He saw it as a spider web of facts and lies that was not at all important to him but which appeared to be necessary in spite of his opinion.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
4676325
|
Man's desire for God is bedded in his unconscious & seeks to satisfy itself in physical possession of another human. This necessarily is a passing, fading attachment in its sensuous aspects since it is a poor substitute for what the unconscious is after.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
018088e
|
Don't let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story-just like the typewriter was mine.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
d1b6892
|
Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. Then, too, any character in a serious novel is supposed to carry a burden of meaning larger than himself. The novelist doesn't write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to..
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
015bab6
|
When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
1837fc0
|
She would have to be a saint because that was the occupation that included everything you could know; and yet she knew she would never be a saint.... but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.
|
|
sainthood
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
d5ffd8e
|
I have enough energy to write with and as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
7512bfd
|
Behind the newspaper Julian was withdrawing into the inner compartment of his mind where he spent most of his time. This was a kind of mental bubble in which he established himself when he could not bear to be a part of what was going on around him. From it he could see out and judge but in it he was safe from any kind of penetration from without. It was the only place where he felt free of the general idiocy of his fellows. His mother had ..
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
afb2ec8
|
has reached the age of ten and is still alive. My critical powers are just sufficient to determine this, and I am gratified to be able to say it. The book was written with zest and, if possible, it should be read that way. It is a comic novel about a Christian , and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death. was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with ..
|
|
wise-blood
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
37badb3
|
I guess a good man IS hard to find!
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
5b56975
|
When something is finished, it cannot be possessed. Nothing can be possessed but the struggle.
|
|
life-lessons
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
5062e54
|
But learned people can analyze for me why I fear hell and their implication is that there is no hell. But I believe in hell. Hell seems a great deal more feasible to my weak mind than heaven. No doubt because hell is a more earth-seeming thing. I can fancy the tortures of the damned but I cannot imagine the disembodied souls hanging in a crystal for all eternity praising God.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
5ea54e5
|
Go back to hell where you came from, you old warthog
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
e2d4fce
|
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's no truth,
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
0e3bc1e
|
She felt that she would have to be much more than just a doctor or an engineer. She would have to be a saint...
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
94f98ee
|
Simone Weil's] life is almost a perfect blend of the Comic and the Terrible, which two things may be opposite sides of the same coin. In my own experience, everything funny I have written is more terrible than it is funny, or only funny because it is terrible, or only terrible because it is funny.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
8042df7
|
Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
9a7fae2
|
I don't really think the standard of judgment, the missing link, you spoke of that you find in my stories emerges from any religion but Christianity, because it concerns specifically Christ and the Incarnation, the fact that there has been a unique intervention in history. It's not a matter in these stories of Do Unto Others. That can be found in any ethical cultural series. It is the fact of the Word made flesh.
|
|
jesus
religion
the-golden-rule
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
fea0c66
|
The modern hero is the outsider. His experience is rootless. He can go anywhere. He belongs nowhere. Being alien to nothing, he ends up being alienated from any type of community based on common tastes and interests. The borders of his country are the sides of his skull.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
a587301
|
He felt his hunger no longer as a pain but as a tide. He felt it rising in himself through time and darkness, rising through the centuries, and he knew that it rose in a line of men whose lives were chosen to sustain it, who would wander in the world, strangers from that violent country where the silence is never broken except to shout the truth. He felt it building from the blood of Abel to his own, rising and spreading in the night, a red..
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
6cd0a7c
|
As was usual with him, he began with the least important thing and worked around and in toward the center where the meaning was.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
8ce942d
|
Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.
|
|
philosophy
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
416876b
|
I suppose half of writing is overcoming the revulsion you feel when you sit down to it.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
152ae51
|
W]hat one has as a born Catholic is something given and accepted before it is experienced. I am only slowly coming to experience things that I have all along accepted. I suppose the fullest writing comes from what has been accepted and experienced both and that I have just not got that far yet all the time. Conviction without experience makes for harshness.
|
|
writing
conviction
experience
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
ecd67ef
|
Poorly written novels -- no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters -- are not good in themselves and are therefore not really edifying.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
dfc72b0
|
what they have to say about themselves makes me think that there is a lot of ill-directed good in them.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
f6b31fb
|
That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence.
|
|
christianity
prologue
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
ab89230
|
You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you're going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
9af2d5f
|
Listen, friends," said the disciple confidently, " [...] I didn't have a friend in the world. Do you know what it's like not to have a friend in the world?" "It ain't no worsen havinum that would put a knife in your back when you wasn't looking," the older man said, barely parting his lips."
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
f0eea85
|
When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic I cannot afford to be less than an artist.
|
|
catholic
artist
writers
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
06a0b1e
|
Our spiritual character is formed as much by what we endure and what is taken from us as it is by our achievements and our conscious choices.
|
|
suffering
spirituality
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
8362db7
|
This shiffer-robe belongs to Hazel Motes. Do not steal it or you will be hunted down and killed.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
a25bca0
|
Living had got to be such a habit with him that he couldn't conceive of any other condition.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
d42dad3
|
The Bible was the only book he read. He didn't read it often but when he did he wore his mother's glasses. They tired his eyes so that after a short time he was always obliged to stop.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
61950f2
|
He had a look of composed dissatisfaction, as if he understood life thoroughly.
|
|
education
philosophy
insight
|
Flannery O'Connor |
|
647e8ce
|
I am largely worried about wingless chickens. I feel this is the time for me to fulfill myself by stepping in and saving the chicken but I don't know how exactly since I am not bold. I only know I believe in the complete chicken. You think about the complete chicken for a while.
|
|
|
Flannery O'Connor |