Beauty is not a means, not a way of furthering a thing in the world. It is a result; it belongs to ordering, to form, to aftereffect. Eudora Welty More Quotes by Eudora Welty More Quotes From Eudora Welty A story is not the same thing when it ends as it was when it began. Eudora Welty ends stories Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one. Eudora Welty next stories writing The fictional eye sees in, through, and around what is really there. Eudora Welty eye All good writers speak in honest voices and tell the truth. Eudora Welty honest voice speak 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 voice reading writing Making reality real is art's responsibility. It is a practical assignment, then, a self-assignment: to achieve, by a cultivated sensitivity for observing life, a capacity for receiving impressions, a lonely, unremitting, unaided, unaidable vision, and transferring this vision without distortion to it onto the pages of a novel, where, if the reader is so persuaded, it will turn into the reader's illusion. Eudora Welty lonely real art I learned quickly enough when to click the shutter, but what I was becoming aware of more slowly was a story-writer's truth: The thing to wait on, to reach for, is the moment in which people reveal themselves... I learned from my own pictures, one by one, and had to; for I think we are the breakers of our own hearts. Eudora Welty heart people thinking The mystery lies in the use of language to express human life. Eudora Welty language use lying Reading Chekhov was just like the angels singing to me. Eudora Welty singing angel reading Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it. Eudora Welty inspiration life travel 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 sea home book 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 Beware of a man with manners. Eudora Welty fake-people manners men 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 writing book moving 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 necks faces sleep But how much better, in any case, to wonder than not to wonder, to dance with astonishment and go spinning in praise, than not to know enough to dance or praise at all; to be blessed with more imagination than you might know at the given moment what to do with than to be cursed with too little to give you -- and other people -- any trouble. Eudora Welty blessed giving people I'm a great reader that never has time to read. Eudora Welty reader Is there any sleeping person you can be entirely sure you have not misjudged? Eudora Welty persons sleep 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 prayer mother father What I do in the writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a human being who is not myself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set the most high. Eudora Welty heart writing character
