I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles 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.

—Flannery O'Connor

She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.

—Flannery O'Connor

The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.

—Flannery O'Connor

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

—Flannery O'Connor

Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God.

—Flannery O'Connor

Most people have to talk so they won't hear.

—May Sarton

Both speech and silence transgress.

—Zen saying

At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; At 45 they are caves in which we hide.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

—Herman Melville

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

—Soren Kierkegaard