Quotes from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“She would've been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“She was a talker, wasn't she?" Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel.

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

"Some fun!" Bobby Lee said.

"Shut up, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“She would have to be a saint because that was the occupation that included everything you could know; and yet she knew she would never be a saint.... but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“I guess a good man IS hard to find!”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“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.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“Living had got to be such a habit with him that he couldn’t conceive of any other condition.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months.

"It's not much farther," the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder.

The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the driver's seat with the cat gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose clinging to his neck like a caterpillar.

As soon as the children saw they could move their arms and legs, they scrambled out of the car, shouting, "We've had an ACCIDENT!" The grandmother was curled up under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in Tennessee.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“Listen, lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now." His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“He had never thought himself a great sinner before but he saw now that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair. He realized that he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson. He saw that no sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“Jesus thrown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn't committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course they never shown me my papers. That's why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you'll have something to prove you ain't been treated right. I call myself the Misfit because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“He had a look of composed dissatisfaction, as if he understood life thoroughly.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“The old woman’s three mountains were black against the dark blue sky and were visited off and on by various planets and by the moon after it had left the chickens.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“With a volley of blasts it emerged from the shed, moving in a fierce and stately way. Mr. Shiftlet was in the driver’s seat, sitting very erect. He had an expression of serious modesty on his face as if he had just raised the dead.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“The trouble with the world was that nobody stopped or took any care.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“Vi är allesammans fördömda", sa hon, "men somliga av oss har tagit av oss ögonbindlarna och sett att inget finns att se. Det är en slags frälsning.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“She had never given much thought to the devil for she felt that religion was essentially for those people who didn’t have the brains to avoid evil without it.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“The child came to a stop beside her mother and stared up at her face as if she had never seen it before. It was the face of the new misery she felt, but on her mother it looked old and it looked as if it might have belonged to anybody, a Negro or a European or to Powell himself. The child turned her head quickly, and past the Negroe's ambling figures she could see the column of smoke rising and widening unchecked inside the granite line of trees. She stood taut, listening, and could just catch in the distance a few wild high shrieks of joy as if the prophets were dancing in the fiery furnace, in the circle the angel had cleared for them.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee. Bailey”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“Lady," he said, and turned and gave her his full attention, "lemme tell you something. There's one of these doctors in Atlanta that's taken a knife and cut the human heart-the human heart," he repeated, leaning forward, "out of a man's chest and held it in his hand," and he held his hand out, palm up, as if it were slightly weighted with the human heart, "and studied it like it was a day-old chicken, and lady," he said, allowing a long significant pause in which his head slid forward and his clay-colored eyes brightened, "he don't know no more about it than you or me."

"That's right," the old woman said.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“Mr. Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again but this time he knew that there were no words in the world that could name it. He understood that it grew out of agony, which is not denied to any man and which is given in strange ways to children. He understood it was all a man could carry into death to give his Maker and he suddenly burned with shame that he had so little of it to take with him. He stood appalled, judging himself with the thoroughness of God, while the action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“The thing you do with a boy it is to show him all the to show. Don't hold nothing back.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“And she said such strange things! To her own mother she had said—without warning “Woman! do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!” she had cried sinking down again and staring at her plate, “Malebranche was right: we are not our own light. We are not our own light!”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

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