Top 24 Quotes by Flannery O'Connor

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.

Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.

The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

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

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

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

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

At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.

To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.