Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and thirty-two short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries.
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.
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.
He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery.
A God you understood would be less than yourself.
I do not like the raw sound of the human voice in unison unless it is under the discipline of music.
The old woman was the kind who would not cut down a large old tree because it was a large old tree.
. . . you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.
If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.
It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object they actually see.
She felt that she would have to be much more than just a doctor or an engineer. She would have to be a saint.
I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.
Conviction without experience makes for harshness.
I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.
A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.
I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.
Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.
The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot.
To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.
Success means being heard and don't stand there and tell me that you are indifferent to being heard. You may write for the joy of it, but the act of writing is not complete in itself. It has to end in its audience.
Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.