Flannery O'Connor

Conviction without experience makes for harshness. ”

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. ”

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. ”

I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again. ”

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

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. ”

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

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. ”