Eudora Welty

"Every artist gets what he deserves from the world he depicts."

"The writer's business is to contemplate experience."

"All of us think we are unique, and the reader assumes this too."

"If you wish to work in a certain medium, you have to make the attempt and the failures."

"Passion is that element in which we swim, like fishes in the sea."

"A story is something that takes place in the mind."

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are stronger at the broken places."

"Understanding belongs to the reader and the listener more than to the speaker."

"Hope is a state of mind, independent of the state of the world."

"Relationships between people are always mysterious."

"What is written about in a book should come from lived experience."

"The patterns of our lives reveal themselves only to ourselves."

"To live is to be invaded by the unexpected."

"Manners maketh man, but observation maketh the writer."

"Beauty is a living presence in nature and art."

"The greatest gift we can give another person is our full attention."

"Finding one true subject for your life's work is the greatest luck."

"Stories are a form of connection between souls."

"Patience is not the absence of action but the acceptance of the process."

"What can you expect to find in the present except the past?"

"The writer seeks out only reality, stripped of make-believe."

"A good writer puts words together with care and intention."

"Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived."

"Every human being has a story that matters."

"The heart's geography has no borders."

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection."

"Growing up is the process of learning who you are not."

"Place is the crossroads of circumstance and character."

"The world asks us constantly: what are you for?"

"Everything that happens in a story is shaped by the emotional truth at its core."