She read Dickens in the spirit in which she would have eloped with him. Eudora Welty More Quotes by Eudora Welty More Quotes From Eudora Welty Writing is an expression of the writer's own peculiar personality, could not help being so. Yet in reading great works one feels that the finished piece transcends the personal. All writers great and small must sometimes have felt that they have become part of what they wrote even more than it still remains a part of them. Eudora Welty reading expression writing Characters take on life sometimes by luck, but I suspect it is when you can write more entirely out of yourself, inside the skin, heart, mind, and soul of a person who is not yourself, that a character becomes in his own right another human being on the page. Eudora Welty heart writing character 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 challenges giving 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 blessing heart writing Gardening is akin to writing stories. No experience could have taught me more about grief or flowers, about achieving survival by going, your fingers in the ground, the limit of physical exhaustion. Eudora Welty grief flower writing 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 writing appreciation book A thing is incredible, if ever, only after it is told -- returned to the world it came out of. Eudora Welty incredibles ifs world 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 raw-materials essence writing Never think you've seen the last of anything. Eudora Welty lasts memorable thinking Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. Eudora Welty stories listening long The novelist works neither to correct nor to condone, not at all to comfort, but to make what's told alive. Eudora Welty novelists alive comfort Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience. Eudora Welty new-experiences mean years 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 waiting long children Plots are ... what the writer sees with. Eudora Welty plot 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 tree joy art Out of love you can speak with straight fury. Eudora Welty introspection speak love-you 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 doe writing character It is our inward journey that leads us through time – forward or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge. Our living experience at those meeting points is one of the charged dramatic fields of fiction. Eudora Welty inward journey moving 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 I'm not very eloquent about things like this, but I think that writing and photography go together. I don't mean that they are related arts, because they're not. But the person doing it, I think, learns from both things about accuracy of the eye, about observation, and about sympathy toward what is in front of you... It's about honesty, or truth telling, and a way to find it in yourself, how to need it and learn from it. Eudora Welty honesty photography art
