Flannery O'Connor

I love, love, LOVE Flannery O’Connor. And here are a few of my favorite quotes of hers:

1 - "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."

2 - "Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles 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."

3 - "The old woman was the kind who would not cut down a large old tree because it was a large old tree."

4 - "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd."

5 - "I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing."

6 - "Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe."

7 - "People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them."

8 - "All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful."

9 - "She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick."

10 - "I write to discover what I know."

11 - "If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you."

12 - "I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted."

13 - "Total nonretention has kept my education from being a burden to me."

14 - "The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience."

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

16 - "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."

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

18 - "The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled."

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

20 - "When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathe News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been anticlimax."

Which ones do you like?