Flannery O'Connor Quotes

″ ‘I don’t want to hold hands with him,’ June Star said. ‘He reminds me of a pig.’ The fat boy blushed and laughed and caught her by the arm and pulled her off into the woods after Hiram and her mother.”

“I was a gospel singer for a while,” The Misfit said. “I been most everything. Been in the arm service both land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet…”

“June Star didn’t think it was any good. She said she wouldn’t marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother said she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentleman and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out.”

″ When he smiled he showed a row of strong white teeth. ‘God never made a finer woman than my mother and my daddy’s heart was pure gold,’ he said.”

″ ‘We’ve had an ACCIDENT!’ the children screamed in a frenzy of delight. ‘But nobody’s killed,’ June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the car…”

″ ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘you shouldn’t call yourself The Misfit because I know you’re a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell.’ ”

“There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report. ‘Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain’t punished at all?’ ”

″ ‘My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. ‘You know,’ Daddy said, ‘it’s some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it’s others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He’s going to be into everything!’ ”

“ ‘In my time,’ said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, ‘children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!’ she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. ‘Wouldn’t that make a picture now?’ ”

″ ‘Hush!’ Bailey yelled, ‘Hush! Everybody shut up and let me handle this!’ He was squatting in the position of a runner about to sprint forward but he didn’t move.”

″ ‘She would of been a good woman,’ The Misfit said, ‘if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.’ ”

″‘[I]t would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me.’ Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to his mother that shocked even the children. The old lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened.”

″ ‘No, lady,’ The Misfit said while he was buttoning it up, ‘I found out the crime don’t matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you’re going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it.’ ”

“It isn’t a soul in this green world of God’s that you can trust,” she said, “And I don’t count nobody out of that, not nobody,” she repeated, looking at Red Sammy.”

“He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right.”

“Jesus!” the old lady cried. “You’ve got good blood! I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I’ll give you all the money I’ve got!”

“John Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung over her mother’s shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never had any fun even on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do.”

“The grandmother noticed how thin his shoulder blades were just behind his hat because she was standing up looking down on him. ‘Do you ever pray?’ she asked. [The Misfit] shook his head. All she saw was the black hat wiggle between his shoulder blades. ‘Nome,’ he said.”

“You could be honest too if you’d only try. Think how wonderful it would be to settle down and live a comfortable life and not have to think about somebody chasing you all the time.”

“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.”