Eudora Welty Quotes

American short story writer, novelist and photographer (1909-2001)

Eudora Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was American short story writer and novelist who wrote about the American South. She was born in Jackson, Mississippi, United States. During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration.

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Native Name: Eudora Alice Welty

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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.

The story and its analyses are not mirror-opposites of each other. They are not reflections, either one. Criticism indeed is an art, as a story is, but only the story is to some degree a vision; there is no explanation outside fiction for what the writer is learning to do.

I think Flannery O'Connor was absolutely and literally right in what she says: that the fact that something is comic does not detract from its seriousness, because the comic and the serious are not opposites. You might as well say satire is not serious, and it's probably the most deadly serious of any form of writing, even though it makes you laugh. No, I think comedy is able to tackle the most serious matters that there are.