What did Flannery O'Connor think of her grotesque characters?

You have to think that most writers love their characters, despite or even because of their quirks and foibles. You have to wonder what Flannery O'Connor thought of her characters. Did she love them - in the way (her) god loves his? Did she pity them? Find them amusing? Or just grotesque? Because they really are grotesque in the peculiarly Southern-gothic manner, though far more extreme than those of the other greats, Faulkner, Welty, in particular. I get a sense that she was godlike, standing back and looking down on her creations, amused and filled with pity: Enoch, in "Wise Blood," stealing from the zoo/museum a mummified Pygmy in the belief that it can become the new Jesus. Enoch speaking, in the saddest scene in the book, to the man in the Gorilla suit, perhaps actually believing he's talking to a gorilla!, finally getting someone to listen to his tale of loneliness - and the gorilla man, some drunk who wants to get out of the rain, tells him to go to hell. Hazel Motes, the main character, heading for another city to preach the Church without Christ from the "nose" of his car, in front of movie theaters. These people are entirely bizarre, even mentally deranged. Why does she write about them? What's her point? Perhaps she is trying to convey some sense that even the least among us is struggling for redemption and can be saved. Or perhaps not - there is a cruelty in her writing that lies (not far) beneath the humor. Her extremely deft phrasing in every sentence - Enoch wearing a costume disguise of with a beard pinned to his hat that a "keen observer" might recognize as a fake (I laughed out loud) - separate her from her characters, the wisest, the true observer, the one above it all.