Quotes from Eudora Welty

Don't ever let this husband of yours, whoever he is, know you can cook, Dabney Fairchild, or you'll spend the rest of your life in the kitchen. That's the first thing I want to tell you.

I have been told, both in approval and in accusation, that I seem to love all my characters.

It was never dark enough, the enormous sky flashing with August light rushing into the emptiest rooms, the loneliest windows. The month of falling stars.

Barefooted on the slick brick walk I rushed to where I could breathe in the cool breath from the interior of the springhouse. On a cold bubbling spring, covered dishes and crocks and pitchers of milk and butter and so on floated in a circle in the mild whirlpool, like horses on a merry-go-round, in the water that smelled of the mint that grew close by.

My temperament and my instinct had told me alike that the author, who writes at his own emergency, remains and needs to remain at his private remove. I wished to be, not effaced, but invisible - actually a profound position. Perspective, the line of vision, the frame of vision - these set a distance.

Her father left his questions unasked. But both knew, and for the same reason, that bad days go better without any questions at all.

I learned from the age of two or three, that any room in our house, at any time of day, was there to read in, or to be read to. It had been startling and disappointing for me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass.

There was a deep boom, like the rolling in of an ocean wave. The hearse door had been slammed shut.

by the essence of their nature, which was frail, all human beings were probably doomed to be seasick.

Sounds from the highway rolled in upon her with the rise and fall of eternal ocean waves. They were as deafening as grief. Windshields flashed into her eyes like lights through tears.

For every book here she had heard their voices, father's and mother's. And perhaps it didn't matter to them, not always, what they read aloud; it was the breath of life flowing between them, and the words of the moment riding on it that held them in delight. Between some two people every word is beautiful, or might as well be beautiful.

It was examinations (in school) that drove my wits away, as all emergencies do. Being expected to measure up was paralysing. It was never that Mother wanted me to beat my classmates in grades, what she wanted was for me to have my answers right. It was unclouded perfection I was up against.

He did not like illness, he distrusted it, as he distrusted the road without signposts. (Death Of A Traveling Salesman)

Only the writing of fiction keeps fiction alive.

They raised their voices, cried out back and forth, as if grief could be fabricated into an argument to comfort itself with.

It was late afternoon. This time tomorrow he would be somewhere on a good graveled road, driving his car past things that happened to people, quicker than their happening. (Death of a Traveling Salesman)

Two by two, 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 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. I wanted to read immediately. The only fear was that of books coming to an end.

But at the next flare a big tree on the hill seemed to turn into fire before their eyes, every branch, twig, and leaf, and a purple cloud hung over it. 'Did you hear that crack?' asked Robbie Bell. 'That were its bones.' 'Why do you little niggers talk so much!' said Doc. 'Nobody's profiting by this information.' 'We always talks this much,' said Sam, 'but now everybody so quiet, they hears us.' (The Wide Net)

On Sundays, Presbyterians were not allowed to eat hot food or read the funny papers or travel the shortest journey; parents believed in Hell and believed tiny babies could go there. Baptists were not supposed to know, up until their dying day, how to play cards or dance. And so on.

Beware of a man with manners.

People live their own way, and to a certain extent I almost believe they may die their own way, Laurel.

Mas a culpa por sobrevivermos àqueles que amamos, é justo que a carreguemos, pensava ela. Sobreviver-lhes é uma desconsideração que lhes fazemos.

A memória pode ser ferida, uma e outra vez, mas aí talvez resida a sua clemência final. Enquanto for vulnerável ao momento da vida, vive para nós, e enquanto vive, e enquanto formos capazes, podemos dar-lhe o que lhe e devido.

I get a moral satisfaction out of putting things together, he said. I like to see a thing finished.