Quotes

(All from Flannery O'Connor's Prayer Journal)


"Please let Christian principles permeate my writing and please let there be enough of my writing (published) for Christian principles to permeate."

"Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted."

"Oh dear God I want to write a novel, a good novel. I want to do this for a good feeling & for a bad one. The bad one is uppermost. The psychologists say it is the natural one. Let me get away dear God from all things thus 'natural.' Help me to get what is more than natural into my work--help me to love & bear with my work on that account. If I have to sweat for it, dear God, let it be as in Your service. I would like to be intelligently holy. I am a presumptuous fool, but maybe the vague thing in me that keeps me in is hope."

"If I ever do get to be a fine writer, it will not be because I am a fine writer but because God has given me credit for a few of the things He kindly wrote for me. Right at present this does not seem to be His policy. I can't write a thing. But I'll continue to try--that is the point."

"Maybe I'm mediocre. I'd rather be less. I'd rather be nothing. An imbecile. Yet this is wrong. Mediocrity, if that is my scourge, is something I'll have to submit to. If that is my scourge. If I ever find out will be time to submit. I will have to have a good many opinions."

"What I am asking for is really very ridiculous. Oh Lord, I am saying, at present I am a cheese, make me a mystic, immediately. But then God can do that--make mystics out of cheeses."