Flannery O'Connor

Since it's her birthday, I thought you might like a few of her memorable quotes:

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.

I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes.

It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.

Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.

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.

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/aut...