The Complete Stories Quotes

“The old woman was the kind who would not cut down a large old tree because it was a large old tree.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“He and the girl had almost nothing to say to each other. One thing he did say was, 'I ain't got any tattoo on my back.'

'What you got on it?' the girl said.

'My shirt,' Parker said. 'Haw.'

'Haw, haw,' the girl said politely.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“Don’t let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story-just like the typewriter was mine.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“Woman! do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“Silly that a grocery should depress one—nothing in it but trifling domestic doings—women buying beans—riding children in those grocery go-carts—higgling about an eighth of a pound more or less of squash—what did they get out of it? Miss Willerton wondered. Where was there any chance for self-expression, for creation, for art? All around her it was the same—sidewalks full of people scurrying about with their hands full of little packages and their minds full of little packages—that woman there with the child on the leash, pulling him, jerking him, dragging him away from a window with a jack-o’-lantern in it; she would probably be pulling and jerking him the rest of her life. And there was another, dropping a shopping bag all over the street, and another wiping a child’s nose, and up the street an old woman was coming with three grandchildren jumping all over her, and behind them was a couple walking too close for refinement.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“She felt that she would have to be much more than just a doctor or an engineer. She would have to be a saint...”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“Nothing is like it used to be, lady,” he said. “The world is almost rotten.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“In short, I am amenable to criticism, but only within the sphere of what I am trying to do; I will not pretend to do otherwise.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound. A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away. She lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead. In a moment the vision faded but she remained where she was, immobile.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“Mr. Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again but this time he knew that there were no words in the world that could name it. He understood that it grew out of agony, which is not denied to any man and which is given in strange ways to children.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“The virtue of hope, in Enoch, was made up of two parts suspicion and one part lust.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“Mrs. May winced. She thought the word, Jesus, should be kept inside the church building like other words inside the bedroom. She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“With the energy he had conserved yesterday letting her dress him, he had written a note and pinned it in his pocket. IF FOUND DEAD SHIP EXPRESS COLLECT TO COLEMAN PARRUM, CORINTH, GEORGIA. Under this he had continued: COLEMAN SELL MY BELONGINGS AND PAY THE FREIGHT ON ME & THE UNDERTAKER. ANYTHING LEFT OVER YOU CAN KEEP. YOURS TRULY T. C. TANNER. P.S. STAY WHERE YOU ARE. DON’T LET THEM TALK YOU INTO COMING UP HERE. ITS NO KIND OF PLACE.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“His plate was full but his fists sat motionless like two dark quartz stones on either side of it.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“He saw that for the rest of his days, frail, racked, but enduring, he would live in the face of a purifying terror. A feeble cry, a last impossible protest escaped him. But the Holy Ghost, emblazoned in ice instead of fire, continued, implacable, to descend.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“I like to walk in the woods and see what Mother Nature is wearing.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“She didn’t like to admit it about her own kin, least about her own brother, but there he was—good for absolutely nothing.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“Some people might enjoy drain water if they were told it was vodka.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“The trouble with you is,” she said, “you sit in front of that window all the time where there’s nothing to look out at. You need some inspiration and an out-let. If you would let me pull your chair around to look at the TV, you would quit thinking about morbid stuff, death and hell and judgement. My Lord.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead.” The Misfit continued, “and He shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness,” he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“Who’s there?” the voice from inside said and there was a quality about it now that seemed final. The knob rattled and the voice said peremptorily, “Who’s there, I ast you?” Parker bent down and put his mouth near the stuffed keyhole. “Obadiah,” he whispered and all at once he felt the light pouring through him, turning his spider web soul into a perfect arabesque of colors, a garden of trees and birds and beasts.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“The dead are a heap more trouble than the living.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“Flannery revealed she had been working on the novel “a year and a half and will probably be two more years finishing it.” She described her writing habits in a letter dated July 13: “I must tell you how I work. I don’t have my novel outlined and I have to write to discover what I am doing.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“He was singing a hillbilly song that sounded half like a love song and half like a hymn.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“She would have been a good woman if there had been somebody to shoot her every day of her life.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“A good man is hard to find,” Red Sammy said. “Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“All day Joy sat on her neck in a deep chair, reading. Sometimes she went for walks but she didn’t like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men. She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“Mrs. Pritchard could not stand an anticlimax. She required the taste of blood from time to time to keep her equilibrium.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“I never argue,” Jacobs said. “That’s because you don’t know this kind of ignorance,” Rayber explained. “You’ve never experienced it.” Jacobs snorted. “Oh yes I have,” he said. “What happened?” “I never argue.” “But you know you’re right,” Rayber persisted. “I never argue.” “Well, I’m going to argue,” Rayber said. “I’m going to say the right thing as fast as they can say the wrong. It’ll be a question of speed. Understand,” he went on, “this is no mission of conversion; I’m defending myself.” “I understand that,” Jacobs said. “I hope you’re able to do it.” “I’ve already done it! You read the paper. There it is.” Rayber wondered if Jacobs were dense or preoccupied. “Okay, then leave it there. Don’t spoil your complexion arguing with barbers.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

“The houses were squat and almost identical and each one had a square of grass in front of it like a dog gripping a stolen steak.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories