The Optimist's Daughter Quotes

“The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much, Laurel thought.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“She was sent to sleep under a velvety cloak of words, richly patterned and stitched with gold, straight out of a fairy tale, while they went reading on into her dreams.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“And perhaps it didn't matter to them, not always, what they read aloud; it was the breath of life flowing between them, and the words of the moment riding on it that held them in delight. Between some two people every word is beautiful, or might as well be beautiful.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“Laurel could not see her face but only the back of her neck, the most vulnerable part of anybody, and she thought: Is there any sleeping person you can be entirely sure you have not misjudged?”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“For her life, any life, she had to believe, was nothing but the continuity of its love.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“At their very feet had been the river. The boat came breasting out of the mist, and in they stepped. All new things in life were meant to come like that.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“You know, sir, this operation is not, in any hands, a hundred percent predictable?"
"Well, I'm an optimist."
"I didn't know there were any more such animals," said Dr. Courtland.
"Never think you've seen the last of anything,”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“For there is hate as well as love, she supposed, in the coming together and continuing of our lives.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“Up home we loved a good storm coming, we’d fly outdoors and run up and down to meet it,” her mother used to say. “We children would run as fast as we could go along the top of that mountain when the wind was blowing, holding our arms right open. The wilder it blew the better we liked it.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“It is memory that is the somnambulist. It will come back in its wounds from across the world, like Phil, calling us by our names and demanding its rightful tears. It will never be impervious. The memory can be hurt, time and again -- but in that may lie its final mercy. As long as it's vulnerable to the living moment, it lives for us, and while it lives, and while we are able, we can give it up its due.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“Memory returned like spring, Laurel thought. Memory had the character of spring. In some cases, it was the old wood that did the blooming”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“At the sting in her eyes, she remembered for him that there must be no tears in his.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“The fantasies of dying could be no stranger than the fantasies of living. Survival is perhaps the strangest fantasy of them all.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“But the guilt of outliving those you love is justly to be borne, she thought. Outliving is something we do to them. The fantasies of dying could be no stranger than the fantasies of living. Surviving is perhaps the strangest fantasy of them all.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“When Laurel was a child, in this room and in this bed where she lay now, she closed her eyes like this and the rhythmic, nighttime sound of the two beloved reading voices came rising in turn up the stairs every night to reach her. She could hardly fall asleep, she tried to keep awake, for pleasure. She cared for her own books, but she cared more for theirs, which meant their voices. In the lateness of the night, their two voices reading to each other where she could hear them, never letting a silence divide or interrupt them, combined into one unceasing voice and wrapped her around as she listened, as still as if she were asleep. She was sent to sleep under a velvety cloak of words, richly patterned and stitched with gold, straight out of a fairy tale, while they went reading on into her dreams.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“When, sometime later, Laurel asked about the bell, her mother replied calmly that how good a bell was depended on the distance away your children had gone.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“For every book here she had heard their voices, father's and mother's. And perhaps it didn't matter to them, not always, what they read aloud; it was the breath of life flowing between them, and the words of the moment riding on it that held them in delight. Between some two people every word is beautiful, or might as well be beautiful.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“He, who had once been the declared optimist, had not once expressed hope. Now it was she who was offering it to him. And it might be false hope”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“I get a moral satisfaction out of putting things together," he said. "I like to see a thing finished.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“They raised their voices, cried out back and forth, as if grief could be fabricated into an argument to comfort itself with.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“People live their own way, and to a certain extent I almost believe they may die their own way, Laurel.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“What burdens we lay on the dying, Laurel thought, as she listened now to the accelerated rain on the roof: seeking to prove some little thing that we can keep to comfort us when they can no longer feel--something as incapable of being kept as of being proved: the lastingness of memory, vigilance against harm, self-reliance, good hope, trust in one another.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“Sounds from the highway rolled in upon her with the rise and fall of eternal ocean waves. They were as deafening as grief. Windshields flashed into her eyes like lights through tears.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“There was a deep boom, like the rolling in of an ocean wave. The hearse door had been slammed shut.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“Her father left his questions unasked. But both knew, and for the same reason, that bad days go better without any questions at all.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“A memória pode ser ferida, uma e outra vez, mas aí talvez resida a sua clemência final. Enquanto for vulnerável ao momento da vida, vive para nós, e enquanto vive, e enquanto formos capazes, podemos dar-lhe o que lhe e devido.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“Mas a culpa por sobrevivermos àqueles que amamos, é justo que a carreguemos, pensava ela. Sobreviver-lhes é uma desconsideração que lhes fazemos.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“Quando Laurel era criança, neste quarto e nesta cama onde se encontrava agora, fechava os olhos assim e o rítmico som nocturno das vozes dos dois entes queridos, a lerem alternadamente, subia as escadas para ir ter com ela. (...) Pela noite fora, as vozes deles a lerem um para o outro (...) sem deixar que nenhum silêncio as interrompesse, uniam-se numa voz única e ininterrupta que a envolvia (...) Adormecia sob um manto aveludado de palavras, (...), enquanto eles prosseguiam a leitura no interior dos seus sonhos".”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“It's our turn! she'd thought exultantly. And we're going to live forever.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

“The memory can be hurt, time and again—but in that may lie its final mercy. As long as it’s vulnerable to the living moment, it lives for us, and while it lives, and while we are able, we can give it up its due.”
― Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter