Eudora Welty Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• Both reading and writing are experiences--lifelong-- in the course of which we who encounter words used in certain ways are persuaded by them to be brought mind and heart within the presence, the power, of the imagination.

  Eudora Welty

  Reading, Heart, Writing

  Eudora Welty (1962). “Three papers on fiction”

  4 Copy quote

• My mother read secondarily for information; she sank as a hedonist into novels. She read Dickens in the spirit in which she would have eloped with him.

  Eudora Welty

  Mother, Reading, Information

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• Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories.

  Eudora Welty

  Long, Fiction, Stories

  Eudora Welty (1995). “One Writer's Beginnings”, p.14, Harvard University Press

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• Learning stamps you with its moments. Childhood's learning is made up of moments. It isn't steady. It's a pulse.

  Eudora Welty

  Learning, Childhood, Pulse

  Eudora Welty (1995). “One Writer's Beginnings”, p.9, Harvard University Press

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• Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.

  Eudora Welty

  Writing, Stories, Way

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• Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.

  Eudora Welty

  Children, Long, Waiting

  Eudora Welty (1995). “One Writer's Beginnings”, p.14, Harvard University Press

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• Once you're into a story everything seems to apply-what you overhear on a city bus is exactly what your character would say on the page you're writing. Wherever you go, you meet part of your story.

  Eudora Welty

  Writing, Character, Cities

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• The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much, Laurel thought.

  Eudora Welty

  People, Littles, Mystery

  Eudora Welty (2011). “The Optimist's Daughter”, p.81, Vintage

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• There's still a strange moment with every book when I move from the position of writer to the position of reader and I suddenly see my words with the eyes of the cold public. It gives me a terrible sense of exposure, as if I'd gotten sunburned.

  Eudora Welty

  Moving, Book, Writing

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• Passion is our ground, our island - do others exist?

  Eudora Welty

  Passion, Islands

  Eudora Welty (2012). “Bride of the Innisfallen & Other Stories: And Other Stories”, p.115, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Look for where the sky is brightest along the horizon. That reflects the nearest river. Strike out for a river and you will find habitation.

  Eudora Welty

  Sky, Rivers, Water

  Eudora Welty (1995). “One Writer's Beginnings”, p.4, Harvard University Press

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• Laurel could not see her face but only the back of her neck, the most vulnerable part of anybody, and she thought: Is there any sleeping person you can be entirely sure you have not misjudged?

  Eudora Welty

  Sleep, Faces, Necks

  Eudora Welty (2011). “The Optimist's Daughter”, p.60, Vintage

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• I believe the alphabet is no longer considered an essential piece of equipment for traveling through life. In my day it was the keystone to knowledge. You learned the alphabet as you learned to count to ten, as you learned "Now I lay me" and the Lord's Prayer and your father's and mother's name and address and telephone number, all in case you were lost.

  Eudora Welty

  Mother, Prayer, Father

  Eudora Welty (1995). “One Writer's Beginnings”, p.9, Harvard University Press

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• The novelist works neither to correct nor to condone, not at all to comfort, but to make what's told alive.

  Eudora Welty

  Novelists, Comfort, Alive

  Eudora Welty (2011). “On Writing”, p.81, Modern Library

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• The writing of a novel is taking life as it already exists, not to report it but to make an object, toward the end that the finished work might contain this life inside it and offer it to the reader. The essence will not be, of course, the same thing as the raw material; it is not even of the same family of things. The novel is something that never was before and will not be again.

  Eudora Welty

  Writing, Essence, Raw Materials

  Eudora Welty (2011). “On Writing”, p.75, Modern Library

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• It's the form it takes when it comes out the other side, of course, that gives a story something unique--its life. The story, in the way it has arrived at what it is on the page, has been something learned, by dint of the story's challenge and the work that rises to meet it--a process as uncharted for the writer as if it had never been attempted before.

  Eudora Welty

  Unique, Giving, Challenges

  Eudora Welty (1998). “Stories, Essays, and Memoir”

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• Since we must and do write each our own way, we may during actual writing get more lasting instruction not from another's work, whatever its blessings, however better it is than ours, but from our own poor scratched-over pages. For these we can hold up to life. That is, we are born with a mind and heart to hold each page up to, and to ask: is it valid?

  Eudora Welty

  Writing, Heart, Blessing

  Eudora Welty (2011). “On Writing”, p.61, Modern Library

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• Dialogue has to show not only something about the speaker that is its own revelation, but also maybe something about the speaker that he doesn't know but the other character does know.

  Eudora Welty

  Writing, Character, Doe

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• For the night was not impartial. No, the night loved some more than others, served some more than others.

  Eudora Welty

  Night

  Eudora Welty (1982). “The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty”, p.362, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures.

  Eudora Welty

  Art, Memories, Writing

  Eudora Welty (2002). “On Writing”, Random House Digital, Inc.

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• When I read, I hear what's on the page. I don't know whose voice it is, but some voice is reading to me, and when I write my own stories, I hear it, too.

  Eudora Welty

  Reading, Writing, Voice

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• Beware of a man with manners.

  Eudora Welty

  Fake People, Men, Manners

  Eudora Welty (1956). “The Golden Apples”, p.14, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Making reality real is art's responsibility.

  Eudora Welty

  Art, Real, Responsibility

  Eudora Welty (2011). “On Writing”, p.53, Modern Library

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• I read library books as fast as I could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle. From the minute I reached our house, I started to read. Every book I seized on, from “Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-a-While” to “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” stood for the devouring wish to read being instantly granted. I knew this was bliss, knew it at the time. Taste isn’t nearly so important; it comes in its own time.

  Eudora Welty

  Book, Home, Sea

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• Ah, I'm a woman that's been clear around the world in my rocking chair, and I tell you we all get surprises now and then.

  Eudora Welty

  World, Surprise, Now And Then

  Eudora Welty (1956). “The Golden Apples”, p.168, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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