Flannery O'Connor Quotes

Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.

If you think all the time every day of your life, you might as well kill yourself today and be happier tomorrow.

The main trouble with despair is that it is self-fulfilling.

I grew up bar-singing and saw all kinds of ways people tried to outrun their emotional pain. It doesn't work. You end up with the original pain, as well as new pain added on top of it from the tactics you used trying to avoid it in the first place. It's best to take a deep breath, bolster yourself, and walk through it.

It's funny how despair can soon become an old companion

I think it's safe to say that each of us has at least one issue we are passionate about and struggle with, issues that robs us of our peace, our joy and our ability to experience love.

Unhappiness in a child accumulates because he sees no end to the dark tunnel. The thirteen weeks of a term might just as well be thirteen years.

Depression, if it's an unconsciously elected experience, is a luxury.

When you want to die, you at least have a goal. You're aiming for something. It's not a good goal, but at least you want something. And you've got anger and fear, but at least you're feeling something.

Where the mind is past hope, the heart is past shame.

For every single person who's struggled with depression, there's this weird part of your brain that tells you you're the only person who's ever felt like that, even if you know for a fact it's not true.

Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable, reactions to what life has dealt.

You're killing yourself with cynicism. Your idols got taken away from you one by one and now you have nothing to give your love to.

I am alive again, now that I can no longer stand to live.

Unhappiness is too common to call for special measures.

I had a lot of frustrations, and I was drinking far too much, and I was just trying to survive and this is what came out of it.

It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report on top of that.

Nerves are normal. You can't be cured from them unless you're a machine.

Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.

I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

Very slowly he turned his head back to look at Shmuel, who wasn't crying anymore, merely staring at the floor and looking as if he was trying to convince his soul not to live inside his tiny body anymore, but to slip away and sail to the door and rise up into the sky, gliding through the clouds until it was very far away.'' -The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

I'm not yet desperate enough to do anything about the conditions that are making me desperate.

I can't cheer up — I don't want to cheer up. It's nicer to be miserable!

A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.

It's okay not to be okay... Sometimes it's hard, to follow your heart but tears don't mean you're losing, everybody's bruising, there's nothing wrong with who you are.