Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers.
Eudora WeltyRead
I wanted to read immediately. The only fear was that of books coming to an end.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a strong desire for reading while also fearing the end of books.
Eudora Welty's quote reflects a deep passion for reading and the joy that comes from immersing oneself in books. It captures the excitement and urgency of wanting to read more, along with the bittersweet realization that every book eventually comes to an end, highlighting both our love for stories and the fleeting nature of those experiences.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of literacy, one might quote Welty to emphasize the joy and fear associated with reading.
Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers.
Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.
A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.
For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave any of us out.
The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.
The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves; what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own interior life; they are individuals every time.
Schools teach you how to work for money, but don't teach how to make money work for you
We are working essentially to build a leadership force of folks who will, during their first two years of teaching, actually put their kids on a different trajectory - not just survive as a new teacher, but actually help close the achievement gap for their kids.
We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.
If you were a medieval scholar reading a book, you knew that there was a reasonable likelihood you'd never see that particular text again, and so a high premium was placed on remembering what you read. You couldn't just pull a book off the shelf to consult it for a quote or an idea.
We must make up our minds to be ignorant of much, if we would know anything.
...the reader who plucks a book from her shelf only once is as deprived as the listener who, after attending a single performance of a Beethoven symphony, never hears it again.
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