261 Quotes by Eudora Welty

Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.

Reading Chekhov was just like the angels singing to me.

A story is not the same thing when it ends as it was when it began.

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.

I had to grow up and learn to listen for the unspoken as well as the spoken-and to know a truth.

The first thing we see about a short story is its mystery. And in the best short stories, we return at the last to see mystery again

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.

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.

Making reality real is art's responsibility.