Flannery O'Connor

"At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily."

"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."

"When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business."

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."

"Conviction without experience makes for harshness."

"Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay."