261 Quotes by Eudora Welty

Memory returned like spring, Laurel thought. Memory had the character of spring. In some cases, it was the old wood that did the blooming

It is memory that is the somnambulist. It will come back in its wounds from across the world, like Phil, calling us by our names and demanding its rightful tears. It will never be impervious. The memory can be hurt, time and again -- but in that may lie its final mercy. As long as it's vulnerable to the living moment, it lives for us, and while it lives, and while we are able, we can give it up its due.

What burdens we lay on the dying, Laurel thought, as she listened now to the accelerated rain on the roof: seeking to prove some little thing that we can keep to comfort us when they can no longer feel--something as incapable of being kept as of being proved: the lastingness of memory, vigilance against harm, self-reliance, good hope, trust in one another.

Memory lived not in initial possession but in the freed hands, pardoned and freed, and in the heart that can empty but fill again, in the patterns restored by dreams.

She flicked an ash into the basket of dirty towels. 'Mrs. Pike is a very decided blonde. She bought me the peanuts.''She must be cute,' said Mrs. Fletcher.'Honey, "cute" ain’t the word for what she is. I’m tellin’ you, Mrs. Pike is attractive. She has her a good time. She’s got a sharp eye out, Mrs. Pike has.("Petrified Man

He loved happiness like I love tea.

He seemed to give the changes his same, kind recognition--to accept them because they had to be only of the time being, even to love them, even to laugh sometimes at their absurdity

People give pain, are callous and insensitive, empty and cruel...but place heals the hurt, soothes the outrage, fills the terrible vacuum that these human beings make.

The thing that seemed like silence must have been the endless cry of all the crickets and locusts in the world, rising and falling.("The Wide Net")