I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my... - Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

"Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing."

"Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days."

"Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days."

"Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them."

"There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself."