Willie Morris Quotes & Sayings

My mother's people, the people who captured my imagination when I was growing up, were of the Deep South - emotional, changeable, touched with charisma and given to histrionic flourishes. They were courageous under tension and unexpectedly tough beneath their wild eccentricities, for they had and unusually close working agreement with God. They also had an unusually high quota of bullshit. — Willie Morris

As with many Southern Writers, I believe that the special quality of the land itself indelibly shapes the people who dwell upon it. — Willie Morris

And it was to this city, whenever I went home, that I always knew I must return, for it was mistress of one's wildest hopes, protector of one's deepest privacies. It was half insane with its noise, violence, and decay, but it gave one the tender security of fulfillment. On winter afternoons, from my office, there were sunsets across Manhattan when the smog itself shimmered and glowed ... Despite its difficulties, which become more obvious all the time, one was constantly put to the test by this city, which finally came down to its people; no other place in America had quite such people and they would not allow you to go stale; in the end they were its triumph and its reward. — Willie Morris

I came across a photograph of him not long ago ... his black face, the long snout sniffing at something in the air, his tail straight and pointing, his eyes flashing in some momentary excitement. Looking at a faded photograph taken more than forty years before, even as a grown man, I would admit I still missed him. — Willie Morris

When a writer knows home in his heart, his heart must remain subtly apart from it. — Willie Morris

His claim to his home is deep, but there are too many ghosts. He must absorb without being absorbed. — Willie Morris

They had buried him under our elm tree, they said
yet this was not totally true. For he really lay buried in my heart. — Willie Morris

I can think of no one more qualified to write about the modern South than Curtis Wilkie — Willie Morris

I have always had a love for American geography, and especially for the landscapes of the South. One of my pleasures has been to drive across it, with no one in the world knowing where I am, languidly absorbing the thoughts and memories of old moments, of people vanished now from my life. — Willie Morris