Flannery O'Connor Quotes

Mystery hovers over all things here below.

Movies work, in my opinion, on the best level when they're more enigmatic, when we don't say it's this or that and where it raises more questions than answers.

My favorite symbols were those which I didn't understand.

When I say that I know women, I mean I know that I don't know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as, I have no doubt, she is to herself.

The incomprehensible pleases us, the inexplicable is our friend.

It is beyond my apprehension.

And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose - that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs.

Not all questions can be answered.

Sometimes there are no answers.

Mystery is the essential element of every work of art.

When things are too clear, they are no longer interesting.

The first thing you should know about people is that you don’t know the first thing about them.

Gray is the color of all theory

I’m very attracted to things that I can’t define.

The unknowable creates the greatest controversies.

Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still

There's some mysterious process at work here, which I don't even want to understand.

Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers.

We cannot understand. The best is perhaps what we understand least.

Some things were beyond understanding.

Establish enigmas, not explanations.

Life is a puzzle that I feel like we'll never fully put together.

Things are really weird around here, and most of us don't know everything. Half of everything.

Mysteries simply are a feast for an active mind. And while in my lifetime I've seen science make extraordinary inroads into solving the most complex questions of life, after all this time I admit that I am thrilled that there are some things that forever will remain a mystery. For example, do I wear a toupee?

Creativity helps us realize that we don't have to understand everything. We can enjoy something -feel it and use it- without ever fully comprehending it.