She (my mother) stood always prepared in herself to challenge the world in our place. She did indeed tend to make the world look dangerous, and so it had been to her. A way had to be found around her love sometimes, without challenging that, and at the same time cherishing it in its unassailable strength. Each of us children did, sooner or later, in part at least, solve this in different, respectful, complicated ways.


Eudora Welty

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

It did no good to cry, she had learned that early on. She had also learned that every time she tried...
STIEG LARSSON
She raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered, as she had sometimes before, how this thing...
IAN MCEWAN
It's not forever', she'd said, but to my mother, it might as well have been. She had make her choice...
SARAH DESSEN
Use your heart. Understand. Learn to see things
in the now, not as they were or will be, or as ...
E.J. PATTEN
Sissy had two great failings. She was a great lover and a great mother. She had so much of tendernes...
BETTY SMITH
She never opened her mail in the middle of the day. Sometimes she forgot about it for a week or more...
NICCI FRENCH
The latter part of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest period in Princess Marya's life. Her l...
LEO TOLSTOY
I still had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere, as far ahea...
RICHARD YATES
Now very much against her will, she thought of the way Jace had looked at her then, the blaze of fai...
CASSANDRA CLARE
She found herself wondering at what point in her life she had ceased to be Gulliver and had become t...
ERICA BAUERMEISTER
I just feel so blessed to have had the time that I had with my mother. She made it so impactful in t...
KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE
He had had to be father and mother to her, and he had taken to his tasks with determination, seeking...
PAULA BRACKSTON
I hope you find your truth and when you do, you stand in the middle of it strong, beautiful and nimb...
SASHA GRAHAM
When she came to her senses again she cut off all contact with him. It had not been easy, but she ha...
STIEG LARSSON
Her innocence was maddening. She should know. She should know what her steward had done. She should ...
MARIE RUTKOSKI
(Pratt) basically did the same thing in (the first game) as she did tonight. We put three different ...
VAL ANAE
Books had always been a comfort to her. More than comfort. There were times when reading came close ...
SARAH MORGAN
Alma had grown as tall as a man by now, with broad shoulders. ... This need not have necessarily pre...
ELIZABETH GILBERT
Why had peace given place so soon to turmoil? To two separate solitudes? Because peace had been with...
MARY BALOGH
although she went home that night feeling happier than she had ever been in her short life, she did ...
E. LOCKHART
Do you feel that you are in a complicated situation today when nothing seems to be going right for y...
LATIKA TEOTIA
How was it that he haunted her imagination so persistently? What could it be? Why did she care for w...
ELIZABETH GASKELL
She taught my family and myself to live every day to the fullest, and she did it. Even in the middle...
MICHELLE RAMSEY
But Lucy had been alone too much of her life, and in her loneliness she had constructed a vision of ...
ANN PATCHETT
Essentially, at this point, Rowland would have to be the dumbest person in the world to voluntarily ...
HUGH KEEFE
Even in that short time he had seen that Anne had great power. She did not care if she quarreled wit...
PHILIPPA GREGORY
This was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. In the hot sun and in the ...
CARSON MCCULLERS
She had no idea how George delighted in her funny ways, or watched her through the window as she sto...
ALLEGRA GOODMAN
Adrian had always found it amusing that a guy could be drilling Stacia up her ass while she consider...
JESS C. SCOTT
Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him, but she did...
LEO TOLSTOY
She understood the world and her place in it. She understood nothing. The world and her place in it ...
JOSEPH FINK
They said she could not do it. But she didn’t listen so when she did it. And when they stood in aw...
TONI SORENSON
She was intimidating and all I could do was sit back on the couch as she paced back and forth, slowl...
IN THE MAKING
This world is a joke, and I'm in it
OLIWAH GOUDEE
The insistent drums were an unwelcome reminder of the existence of another world, wholly autonomous,...
PAUL BOWLES
Acceptance made her realize that she had it in her to boldly and gracefully handle her own life. She...
LATIKA TEOTIA
She's just come undone," her mother had whispered on the phone to her aunt Bella. It was an old coll...
KARIN SLAUGHTER
She knew this man's smile, his gentle ways of love, but not his godlike fury in the storm. She might...
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPéRY
Jo's face was a study next day, for the secret rather weighed upon her, and she found it hard not to...
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
The only thing that [Amaranta] did not keep in mind in her fearsome plan was that in spite of her pl...
GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ
Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking...
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace."
I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl...
TAMMARA WEBBER
She felt as she often did in class when she was nearly sure she had the right answer, but could not ...
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
But the more Emma recognised her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident, t...
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
My mother taught us to play baseball, to bake a cake, to play fair - she beat the living daylights o...
JANET RENO
Sometimes he wondered if man's instincts had changed in that time and always concluded that they had...
NICHOLAS SPARKS
To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowl...
HENRY JAMES
If you are a misfit in one place, you will be a great fit in another.
ALAN COHEN
Mike had a wife and her name was Terri. She came before me, and I knew that. That was just that. Not...
JODI SCHIAVO
My mother is a very strange woman... She doesn't understand me in the least and doesn't love...
EGON SCHIELE
For once I didn't look away immediately. I forced myself to meet her contemptuous gaze. I allowed my...
MALORIE BLACKMAN
Besides her family, the only other permanent part of her life was with her friends online. She could...
STEVAN V. NIKOLIC
Her eyes were full of a hot liquid (she did not think of tears at first) which, without disturbing t...
VIRGINIA WOOLF
At some point, she didn't know when or for how long, she found herself lost, lost in a song. Her eye...
JAMES MORRIS
She knows Daddy better than I do. I think it's because she's felt since we were children that our Da...
JAMES BALDWIN
She didn’t have a good reason for most of what she did. Mostly, she went by what seemed right in t...
JOSEPH FINK
I've been talking to myself a lot lately. I don't know what that's about, but my mother was the same...
DAN CHAON
She stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted her sails.
ELIZABETH EDWARDS
Her beauty effortlessly managed to arrest the pulse of each heart at the office and keep it in a dre...
PAWAN MISHRA
When I look back at those pictures of my mother performing - and listen to her recordings - it makes...
MARLO THOMAS
She did understand, or at least she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, ...
MARGARET ATWOOD
She was completely alone in the world. There was no one at all for her. No one in the world who care...
CASSANDRA CLARE
The earth is an arena of champions. We are all champions. We all did overcome millions of potential ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two who had never seen each other before that day,...
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
And she looked upon the mirror that was given as a gift. She hated everything about it, from the cir...
ANTHONY LICCIONE
My mother has made choices in her life, as we all must, and she is at peace with them. I can see her...
ELIZABETH GILBERT
My mother started out by being a very good girl. She did everything that was expected of her, and it...
RUTH REICHL
He had been violently confused by her real presence in the opposite inaccessible corner. For months ...
A.S. BYATT
Smiling wistfully at the thought of her beloved sister, Daisy felt a wave of loneliness sweep over h...
LISA KLEYPAS
The wide world was changing, and she wanted a different place in it.

Not just wanted, but...
JAMES ROBERTSON
Easing back in her seat, Grace watched the children in the playground opposite, coats off, faces flu...
KATHLEEN TESSARO
My sister Emily first declined. The details of her illness are deep-branded in my memory, but to dwe...
CHARLOTTE BRONTë
when she looked longer at herself in her new dress, it was she but she living a different life, the ...
MILAN KUNDERA
She was desperate and she was choosey
at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn'...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
This was our house. Mine and hers. I know she’d sneak over to the rectory every once in a while an...
TIFFANY REISZ
So now the sky was falling.
Maybe the end of the world. Maybe Jesus coming again.
That s...
MARY CONNEALY
Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON
Every time I read to her, it was like I was courting her, because sometimes, just sometimes, she wou...
NICHOLAS SPARKS
My mother painted and wrote. She always had a painting in progress on an easel in the kitchen, so ou...
LUANNE RICE
Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness whic...
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
The adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or beating; it was not a supe...
AYN RAND
she didn't need anyone. At Wheeler, even when she stood out with her pink hair and quilter army-surp...
JODI PICOULT
You see a great player like Lindsey and at times it looks effortless for her on the field, so she so...
JON LIPSITZ
Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley’s attentions to her sister, Elizabeth was far from suspecting th...
JANE AUSTEN
Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live, and she was always...
PAULO COELHO
Kestrel's cruel calculation appalled her. This was part of what had made her resist the military: th...
MARIE RUTKOSKI
Quiero que [mi hijo] conozca el secreto de la felicidad, algo tan sencillo que da la impresión de q...
JAMES RHODES
When she came here in seventh grade, it was obvious watching her play that she had God-given skills....
ERIC RASMUSSEN
The day she realised, it was not about the world but was all about her, she grew the wings. The day ...
AKSHAY VASU
In the end, though, I did not kill my sister. She did it all on her own.

Or at least thi...
JODI PICOULT
The larger things that this book -- and all my books -- revolve around are a woman's id, ... And how...
JENNIFER WEINER
She wasn’t afraid of difficulties; what frightened her was being forced to choose one particular p...
PAULO COELHO
It pained her that a few hundred words in an also-ran newspaper could get her kicked out. That damne...
RICHARD CASTLE
She would probably cry and wonder what in the world she had done to make the other swimmer mad. She ...
LINDA HOWARD
in all the years i had blundered along in search of my own footing, she had never given me an inklin...
GAIL CALDWELL
Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honor of a bri...
THOMAS HARDY
I knew my own mother had been in the theater for a while and had taught children, because she used t...
EVE ARDEN
(Strother) just had that confidence that she thought she was going to knock it in. (Sunday) she had ...
BARBARA TURNER
It's funny, most people can be around someone and they gradually begin to love them and never know e...
FANNIE FLAGG
Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of ...
ZORA NEALE HURSTON

More Eudora Welty

The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.
EUDORA WELTY
For the night was not impartial. No, the night loved some more than others, served some more than ot...
EUDORA WELTY
The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they fi...
EUDORA WELTY
All serious daring starts from within.
EUDORA WELTY
Through learning at my later date things I hadn't known, or had escaped or possibly feared realizing...
EUDORA WELTY
It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by peopl...
EUDORA WELTY
Don't want to do a thing, Ran, do we, from now and on till evermore.
EUDORA WELTY
Writers and travelers are mesmerized alike by knowing of their destinations.
EUDORA WELTY
She was a perfect lady--just sat in her seat and stared.
EUDORA WELTY
Integrity can be neither lost nor concealed nor faked nor quenched nor artificially come by nor outl...
EUDORA WELTY
Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sen...
EUDORA WELTY
Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own ...
EUDORA WELTY
I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and bind...
EUDORA WELTY
They could play an endless game of hide-and -seek in so many rooms and up and down the halls that in...
EUDORA WELTY
A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.
EUDORA WELTY
Greater than scene is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is...
EUDORA WELTY
His (my father's) general belief in life's well-being worked either way. 'Have you ever had it befor...
EUDORA WELTY
Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause...
EUDORA WELTY
It took the mountain top, it seems to me now, to give me the sensation of independence. It was as if...
EUDORA WELTY
It is not for nothing that an ominous feeling often attaches itself to a procession. In films and st...
EUDORA WELTY
Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause...
EUDORA WELTY
Relationship is a pervading and changing mystery...brutal or lovely, the mystery waits for people wh...
EUDORA WELTY
Beware of a man with manners.
EUDORA WELTY
On Sundays, Presbyterians were not allowed to eat hot food or read the funny papers or travel the sh...
EUDORA WELTY
It seems likely to me now that the very element in my character that took possession of me there on ...
EUDORA WELTY
When one of us (children) caught measles or whooping cough and we were isolated in bad upstairs, we ...
EUDORA WELTY
My father did not bring it up, but of course I knew that he had another reason to worry about my dec...
EUDORA WELTY
The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they fi...
EUDORA WELTY
Any room in our house at any time in the day was there to read in or to be read to.
EUDORA WELTY
Taking trips tore all of us up inside, for they seemed, each journey away from home, something that ...
EUDORA WELTY
When my mother would tell me that she wanted me to have something because she as a child had never h...
EUDORA WELTY
Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause...
EUDORA WELTY
A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.
EUDORA WELTY
She was a cosmopolitan woman still expecting to encounter and savor something new and unusual, still...
EUDORA WELTY
House said to Finesse, not even trying to mask the irritation in his voice. ''Can't we go into the s...
EUDORA WELTY
A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.
EUDORA WELTY
She was a perfect lady - just sat in her seat and stared
EUDORA WELTY
[As for her being a] Maiden Aunt, ... striking ability to charm the opposite sex.
EUDORA WELTY
It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by peopl...
EUDORA WELTY
I'm prepared now to use the wonderful word confluence, which of itself exists as a reality and a sym...
EUDORA WELTY
Never think you've seen the last of anything.
EUDORA WELTY
Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own ...
EUDORA WELTY
What I do in the writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a huma...
EUDORA WELTY
Our Victrola stood in the diningroom. I was allowed to climb onto the seat of a diningroom chair to ...
EUDORA WELTY
It was entirely taken for granted that there wasn't any lying in our family, and I was advanced in a...
EUDORA WELTY
The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they fi...
EUDORA WELTY
I can't think I had much of a sense of humor as long as I remained the only child. When my brother E...
EUDORA WELTY
A whole tree of lightning stood in the sky. She kept looking out the window, suffused with the warmt...
EUDORA WELTY
I'm a great reader that never has time to read.
EUDORA WELTY
I didn't hit other people or hit purposefully, I just hit. Some object would be at fault. My anger w...
EUDORA WELTY
People are mostly layers of violence and tenderness wrapped like bulbs, and it is difficult to say w...
EUDORA WELTY
All children in those small-town, unhurried days had a vast inner life going on in the movies. Child...
EUDORA WELTY
What discoveries I made in the course of writing stories all begin with the particular, never the ge...
EUDORA WELTY
She (my mother) could still recite them (the poems) in full when she was lying helpless and nearly b...
EUDORA WELTY
On the train I saw that world passing my window. It was when I came to see it was I who was passing ...
EUDORA WELTY
I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all s...
EUDORA WELTY
I've always been shy physically. This in part tended to keep me from rushing into things, including ...
EUDORA WELTY
I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all...
EUDORA WELTY
In real life I fell easily under the spell of all traveling artists. En route to New Orleans, entert...
EUDORA WELTY
A conscious act grew out of this by the time I began writing stories: getting my distance, a prerequ...
EUDORA WELTY
He loved happiness like I love tea.
EUDORA WELTY
It was examinations (in school) that drove my wits away, as all emergencies do. Being expected to me...
EUDORA WELTY
It was not my intention - it never was - to invent a character who should speak for me, the author, ...
EUDORA WELTY
As though what he did were the excuse for their own boredom then, and lack of concern.

He...
WELTY EUDORA
To imagine yourself inside another person... is what a storywriter does in every piece of work; it i...
EUDORA WELTY
My temperament and my instinct had told me alike that the author, who writes at his own emergency, r...
EUDORA WELTY
The Waves.
EUDORA WELTY