[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'ConnorElizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.
Flannery O'ConnorI come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.
Flannery O'ConnorI'm a member and preacher to that church where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way.
Flannery O'ConnorPeople without hope not only donโt write novels, but what is more to the point, they donโt read them. They donโt take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience.
Flannery O'Connor