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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. Whether this happens to be a man or a woman, old or young, with skin black or white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set most high.

— Eudora Welty her Preface to The Collected Stories (1980)

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More quotes by Eudora Welty

The novelist works neither to correct nor to condone, not at all to comfort, but to make what's told alive.

On Writing (2002)

All experience is an enrichment rather than an impoverishment.

One Writer's Beginnings (1984)

If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?

[he] said to her, "You will find that men who are generous the way he is generous have needs to match."

The Robber Bridegroom (1942)

Every writer, like everybody else, thinks he's living through the crisis of the ages. To write honestly and with all our powers is the least we can do, and the most.

On Writing (2002)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Eudora Welty (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.