Quote

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming of themselves like grass.

Eudora Welty

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Eudora Welty
Age: 102 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 13
Died: 2011
Died: July 23
Author
Autobiographer
Literary Critic
Novelist
Photographer
Writer
Jackson
Mississippi
Eudora Alice Welty
Stories
Appreciation
Find
Grass
Book
Coming
Writing
Wonder
Like
Books
People
Written
Startling
Story
Disappointing
Natural
Wonders

More quotes by Eudora Welty

Image
I believe in it, and I trust it too and treasure it above everything, the personal, the personal, the personal! I put my faith in it not only as the source, the ground of meaning in art, in life, but as the meaning itself.
Eudora Welty
Image
One place understood helps us understand all places better
Eudora Welty
Image
A short story is confined to one mood, to which everything in the story pertains. Characters, setting, time, events, are all subject to the mood. And you can try more ephemeral, more fleeting things in a story - you can work more by suggestion - than in a novel. Less is resolved, more is suggested, perhaps.
Eudora Welty
Image
The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.
Eudora Welty
Image
The first act of insight is throw away the labels.
Eudora Welty
Image
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
Image
Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories.
Eudora Welty
Image
I wanted to read immediately. The only fear was that of books coming to an end.
Eudora Welty
Image
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
Image
it doesn t matter if it takes a long time getting there the point is to have a destination.
Eudora Welty
Image
My main disappointment was always that a book had to end. And then what? But I don't think I was ever disappointed by the books. I must have been what any author would consider an ideal reader. I felt every pain and pleasure suffered or enjoyed by all the characters. Oh, but I identified!
Eudora Welty
Image
Relationship is a pervading and changing mystery... brutal or lovely, the mystery waits for people wherever they go, whatever extreme they run to.
Eudora Welty
Image
If you haven't surprised yourself, you haven't written.
Eudora Welty
Image
A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.
Eudora Welty
Image
Write about what you don't know about what you know.
Eudora Welty
Image
No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing from the first seeing to the last putting down, there must be steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose.
Eudora Welty
Image
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
Image
How can you go out on a limb if you do not know your own tree? No art ever came out of not risking your neck. And risk--experiment--is a considerable part of the joy of doing.
Eudora Welty
Image
To imagine yourself inside another person...is what a story writer does in every piece of work it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.
Eudora Welty
Image
My own words, when I am at work on a story, I hear too as they go, in the same voice that I hear when I read in books. When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make changes. I have always trusted this voice.
Eudora Welty