Flannery O'Connor Quotes

Carmen was bad at loving. She loved too hard.

Alas, how love can trifle with itself!

I have loved him too much not to hate

I can't live without you or with you.

The ways of love are strange and hard: The love you want is always barred; The love you have you want to change. The ways of love are hard and strange.

I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair. I hate the way you drive my car. I hate it when you stare. I hate your big dumb combat boots, and the way you read my mind. I hate you so much it makes me sick; it even makes me rhyme. I hate it, I hate the way you're always right. I hate it when you lie. I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry. I hate it when you're not around, and the fact that you didn't call. But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.

Love that is fed by jealousy dies hard.

You know what the crummiest feeling you can have is? To hate the person you love the best in the world.

I don’t like you, Park. Sometimes I think I live for you

I would have done anything for him. Maybe that was my sickness.

And it seemed to me that there were fires Flying till dawn without number And I never found out things-those Strange eyes of his-what colour? Everything trembling and singing and Were you my enemy or my friend, Winter was it or summer?

But I love you, “ he whispered. “Doesn't that matter?” “Of course it matters. So much. Can't you see? That only makes it more… necessary.” His eyes flashed open. “Is it so unbearable to have me love you? Is that it? I can keep my mouth shut, Wanda. I won't say it again. You can be with Jared, if that's what you want. Just stay.

I didn’t know how I could live with that knowledge, without it eating me up, without it poisoning every happy memory I had of growing up. Without it ruining everything Beck and I had. I didn’t understand how someone could be both God and the devil. How the same person could destroy you and save you. When everything I was, good and bad, was knotted with threads of his making, how was I supposed to know whether to love or hate him?

Love is unpredictable and it’s frustrating and it’s tragic and it’s beautiful.

I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.

I want to believe you, but if that's true, I just don't get it. Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them just as much? I mean, if that's the way it goes, what's the point of loving someone?

His love for her was so deeply woven with resentment that he could not untangle the two.

I do not love you-except because I love you; I go from loving to not loving you, from waiting to not waiting for you my heart moves from the cold into the fire.

‎She didn't understand what it was like to be filled with a love so strong that it made your chest ache—a love you could only feel and not express. Keeping love buried was a lot like keeping anger pent up, I'd learned. It just ate you up inside until you wanted to scream or kick something.

I killed her once and died for her many times

I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once and cannot add up the sum.

That is the crowning evil, that we can even go so far as to love each other, you and I. And who else would show us a particle of love, a particle of compassion or mercy? Who else, knowing us as we know each other, could do anything but destroy us? Yet we can love each other.

Isn't joyful or painful this pain in which I rejoice

I loved you when you were unfaithful; what would I have done if you were true?