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

He felt he knew now what time would be like without seasons and what heat would be like without light and what man would be like without salvation. He didn't care if he never made the train and if it had not been for what suddenly caught his attention, like a cry out of the gathering dusk, he might have forgotten there was a station to go to.

— Flannery O'Connor

He had a look of composed dissatisfaction, as if he understood life thoroughly.

— Flannery O'Connor

He had a winning smile, and it was evident that he didn't think he was any better than anybody else even though he was.

— Flannery O'Connor

He had measured five feet four inches of pure gamecock.

— Flannery O'Connor

He has the mistaken notion that a concern with grace is a concern with exalted human behavior, that it is a pretentious concern. It is, however, simply a concern with the human reaction to that which, instant by instant, gives life to the soul. It is a concern with a realization that breeds charity and with the charity that breeds action. Often the nature of grace can be made plain only by describing its absence.

— Flannery O'Connor

He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery...

— Flannery O'Connor

His friends told him that nobody was interested in his goddam soul unless it was the priest, and he managed to answer that no priest taking orders from no pope was going to tamper with his soul. They told him he didn't have any soul and left for the brothel. He took a long time to believe them because he wanted to believe them. All he wanted was to believe them and get rid of it once and for all, and he saw opportunity here to get rid of it without corruption, to be converted to nothing instead of to evil. The army sent him halfway around the world and forgot him. He was wounded, and they remembered him long enough to take the shrapnel out of his chest - they said they took it out, but they never showed it to him, and he felt it still in there, rusted, and poisoning him - and then they sent him to another desert and forgot him again. He had all the time he could want to study his soul in and assure himself that it was not there. When he was thoroughly convinced, he saw that this was something that he had always known.

— Flannery O'Connor

His plate was full, but his fists sat motionless like two dark quartz stones on either side of it.

— Flannery O'Connor

I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.

— Flannery O'Connor