Flannery O'Connor

I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

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

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

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

Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

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

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.

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle 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.

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.