45 Best Flannery O’Connor Quotes To Inspire You

Check out the best Flannery O’Connor quotes that explore faith, grace, morality, and the complexities of human nature.

Mary Flannery O’Connor was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist best known for her sharp wit, dark humor, and deeply rooted Christian themes.

Born in 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, she became one of the most important voices in 20th-century American literature.

O’Connor has published two novels and over 30 short stories, including her famous works Wise Blood and A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

Her writings explore complex themes like redemption, morality, ethics, and the struggle between good and evil, often through imperfect human characters.

Her unique and unapologetic Southern Catholic style set her apart, making her stories powerful and thought-provoking.

Though her life was tragically cut short by lupus at the age of 39, her legacy remains as her sharp storytelling continues to challenge and inspire readers worldwide.

Here are the most famous Flannery O’Connor quotes that will make you think, question, and see life in a new light.

Top 10 Flannery O’Connor Quotes

1. “I write to discover what I know.” — Flannery O’Connor

   

2. “In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.” — Flannery O’Connor

   

3. “Conviction without experience makes for harshness.” — Flannery O’Connor

   

4. “Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you.” — Flannery O’Connor

   

5. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.” — Flannery O’Connor

   

6. “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” — Flannery O’Connor

   

7. “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” — Flannery O’Connor

   

8. “Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.” — Flannery O’Connor

   

9. “Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.” — Flannery O’Connor

   

10. “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.” — Flannery O’Connor

    

Best Flannery O’Connor Quotes 

1. “I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.” — Flannery O’Connor
2. “You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.” — Flannery O’Connor
3. “It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth.” — Flannery O’Connor
4. “If you don’t hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you.” — Flannery O’Connor
5. “Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me.” — Flannery O’Connor
6. “Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.” — Flannery O’Connor
7. “…you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.” — Flannery O’Connor
8. “Anyone who survives a southern childhood has enough material to last a lifetime.” — Flannery O’Connor
9. “I don’t deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.” — Flannery O’Connor
10. “To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.” — Flannery O’Connor
11. “I think there is no greater suffering than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe.” — Flannery O’Connor
12. “I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.” — Flannery O’Connor
13. “The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.” — Flannery O’Connor
14. “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.” — Flannery O’Connor
15. “[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…” — Flannery O’Connor

Famous Quotes From Flannery O’Connor

1. “A God you understood would be less than yourself.” — Flannery O’Connor
2. “Well, if (The Eucharist) is just a symbol, then to hell with it.” — Flannery O’Connor
3. “The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.” — Flannery O’Connor
4. “The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.” — Flannery O’Connor
5. “To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.” — Flannery O’Connor
6. “If we forget our past, we won’t remember our future and it will be as well because we won’t have one.” — Flannery O’Connor
7. “The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.” — Flannery O’Connor
8. “You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s sufferings and not your own.” — Flannery O’Connor
9. “What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.” — Flannery O’Connor
10. “The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.” — Flannery O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor Quotes And Sayings

1. “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.” — Flannery O’Connor
2. “A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.” — Flannery O’Connor
3. “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.” — Flannery O’Connor
4. “I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.” — Flannery O’Connor
5. “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.” — Flannery O’Connor
6. “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.” — Flannery O’Connor
7. “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.” — Flannery O’Connor
8. “In the first place you can be so absolutely honest and so absolutely wrong at the same time that I think it is better to be a combination of cautious and polite.” — Flannery O’Connor
9. “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.” — Flannery O’Connor
10. “I am very much afraid that to the fiction writer the fact that we shall always have the poor with us is a source of satisfaction, for it means, essentially, that he will always be able to find someone like himself.” — Flannery O’Connor

Conclusion

What are your favorite Flannery O’Connor quotes and sayings (with images) listed above? If there is a quote that we’ve missed then let us know in the comments section below.

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