Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one. — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“I learned from the age of two or three that any room in our house, at any time of day, was there… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
To write honestly and with all our powers is the least we can do, and the most. — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“I don't know whether I could do either one, reading or writing, without the other” — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
At the time of writing, I don't write for my friends or myself either; I write for it, for the pleasure of… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
The novelist works neither to correct nor to condone, not at all to comfort, but to make what's told alive. — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“Henry James said there isn't any difference between "the English novel" and "the American novel" since there are only two kinds of… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing; from the first seeing to the last putting down,… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
Both reading and writing are experiences--lifelong-- in the course of which we who encounter words used in certain ways are persuaded by… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
What I do in the writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer. Humanity itself seems to matter more to the novelist than what… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“Once you're into a story everything seems to apply- what you overhear on a city bus is exactly what your character would… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
I read library books as fast as I could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle. From the minute… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them - with… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“My father did not bring it up, but of course I knew that he had another reason to worry about my decision… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
It's the form it takes when it comes out the other side, of course, that gives a story something unique--its life. The… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
Since we must and do write each our own way, we may during actual writing get more lasting instruction not from another's… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
A short story is confined to one mood, to which everything in the story pertains. Characters, setting, time, events, are all subject… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
The writing of a novel is taking life as it already exists, not to report it but to make an object, toward… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“I'm prepared now to use the wonderful word confluence, which of itself exists as a reality and a symbol in one. It… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“The camera was a hand-held auxiliary of wanting-to-know. It had more than information and accuracy to teach me. I learned in the… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“We do need to bring to our writing, over and over again, all the abundance we possess. To be able, to be… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“There was one story that anger certainly lit the fuse of. In the 1960's, in my home town of Jackson, the civil… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
Any room in our house at any time in the day was there to read in or to be read to. — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart, and skin of a human… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“Two by two, I read library books as fast as I could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle.… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
My main disappointment was always that a book had to end. And then what? But I don't think I was ever disappointed… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“She (my mother) could still recite them (the poems) in full when she was lying helpless and nearly blind, in her bed, an old… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
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… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
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… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“Two by two, I read library books as fast as I could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle. From the… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“When somebody, no matter who, gives everything, it makes people feel ashamed for him.” — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“All children in those small-town, unhurried days had a vast inner life going on in the movies. Children were allowed to go without chaperone… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“At the sting in her eyes, she remembered for him that there must be no tears in his.” — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“We do need to bring to our writing, over and over again, all the abundance we possess. To be able, to be ready, to… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“When one of us (children) caught measles or whooping cough and we were isolated in bad upstairs, we wrote notes to each other perhaps… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image
“She (my mother) stood always prepared in herself to challenge the world in our place. She did indeed tend to make the world look… — Eudora Welty Copy Share Image