"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."
— Flannery O'Connor

"There are Navajo teachings about how a car works. This vehicle is very much like a horse, operating on the same principles. The automobile is considered more "intelligent," and we think of it in such terms. The automobile is mad eof iron and steel taken from the earth. This iron is the earth's spirit, which has been made into the body of the automobile. The trees, as vegetation, were also taken from the earth and made into rubber for the tires. The air, or spirit, is the same as that of a horse's breath of life, instilled in its body. The arms and legs of the auto makes it move. Then there are the dark storm clouds and heavenly bodies like lightning, which are found inside the auto to give it power. This is exactly the same power the horse has.

Water, which comes from the earth, is put into the auto for its cooling system. Oil from the earth is similar to the fat from the earth a horse receives. Just as gasoline comes from the earth as fuel, plants are in a horse's body to make it operate. Therefore, horses and cars are the sam in every way. "
— John Holiday (A Navajo Legacy: The Life and Teachings of John Holiday)

"People say Jesus Christ is a god, and they pray to him. Likewise, the Navajos have a god. He is an everlasting god who never dies, and we pray to him for everything. We were created from white shell in a sacred, holy way. Part of the white shell was taken and put in our bodies, but no one can see it. White Shell is a god. We pray to her "to give us the invisible white shell shoes, white shell socks, clothing, feathers," and so on. This god is female and is out there, but we cannot see her. "
— John Holiday

"Once upon a time, the white man's God, also known as One Who Wins You as a Prize, had beaten everyone and won everything. He even beat One You Gather Everything Fore and won as a prize the earth, its people, the heavens, and all that they contained. "
— John Holiday (A Navajo Legacy: The Life and Teachings of John Holiday)

"There was no one as good as he at using the ovens of logic to bake agreeable results. "
— William T. Vollmann (Fathers and Crows)

"As surely as the town of Rochelle is Protestant I can see you now becoming impatient. The covers of my book are between your relentless palms. A single hint of insolence on this page, the faintest shine of gloating over all these delays, and you will slam the volume shut - don't claim I can't predict it!"
— William T. Vollmann (Fathers and Crows)

"Our shared world is humanly unquantifiable and ideologically confused. Which one of them is capable of implementing the most recognizable harm or good? "
— James Ellroy (Blood's A Rover)

"I distrust pious phrases, especially when they issue from my mouth. I try militantly never to be affected by the pious language of the faithful but it is always coming out when you least expect it. In contrast to the pious language of the faithful, the liturgy is beautifully flat. "
— Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)

"Conviction without experience makes for harshness. "
— Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)

"[Simone Weil's] life is almost a perfect blend of the Comic and the Terrible, which two things may be opposite sides of the same coin. In my own experience, everything funny I have written is more terrible than it is funny, or only funny because it is terrible, or only terrible because it is funny. "
— Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)

"In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery..."
— Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)

"The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character. Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. Then, too, any character in a serious novel is supposed to carry a burden of meaning larger than himself. The novelist doesn't write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to be demonstrated, and the novelist tries to give you, within the form of the book, the total experience of human nature at any time. For this reason, the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama. "
— Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)

"...the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it. "
— Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)

"You don't serve God by saying: the Church is ineffective, I'll have none of it. Your pain at its lack of effectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God. We help overcome this lack of effectiveness simply by suffering on account of it. "
— Flannery O'Connor

"Satisfy your demand for reason but always remember that charity is beyond reason, and God can be known through charity."
— Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)