Wright Morris Quotes & Sayings

I prefer a taken to a made photograph. — Wright Morris

The camera eye is the one in the middle of our forehead, combining how we see with what there is to be seen. — Wright Morris

We're in the world of communications more and more, tough we're in communication less and less. — Wright Morris

[We] make images to see clearly: then we see clearly what we have made. — Wright Morris

However much [photographs] may lie, they do so with the raw materials of truth. — Wright Morris

The photograph, after all, is just a photograph. Words will determine its meaning and status. — Wright Morris

As the style of Faulkner grew out of his rage
out of the impotence of his rage
the style of Hemingway grew out of the depth andnuance of his disenchantment. — Wright Morris

The past is useless. That explains why it is past. — Wright Morris

The imagination made us human, but being human, becoming more human, is a greater burden than we imagined. We have no choice but to imagine ourselves more human than we are. — Wright Morris

There's little to see, but things leave an impression. It's a matter of time and repetition. As something old wears thin or out, something new wears in. The handle on the pump, the crank on the churn, the dipper floating in the bucket, the latch on the screen, the door on the privy, the fender on the stove, the knees of the pants and the seat of the chair, the handle of the brush and the lid to the pot exist in time but outside taste; they wear in more than they wear out. It can't be helped. It's neither good nor bad. It's the nature of life. — Wright Morris

We make to ourselves pictures of facts. The picture is a model of reality — Wright Morris

Life, raw life, the kind we lead every day, whether it leads us into the past or the future, has the curious property of not seeming real enough. We have a need, however illusive, for a life that is more real than life. It lies in the imagination. Fiction would seem to be the way it is processed into reality. If this were not so we should have little excuse for art. Life, raw life, would be more than satisfactory in itself. But it seems to be the nature of man to transform - himself, if possible, and then the world around him - and the technique of this transformation is what we call art. — Wright Morris

Everyone in California is from somewhere else. — Wright Morris

The man who comes to writing late, but is in essence a writer, may sometimes gain as much as he has lost: his experience of life has given him a subject, he is spared the youthful writer's self-torment and soul-searching. — Wright Morris

Cats don't belong to people. They belong to places. — Wright Morris

Writes have an island, a center of refuge, within themselves. It is the mind's anchorage, the soul's Great Good Place. — Wright Morris

The man who walks alone is soon trailed by the F.B.I. — Wright Morris

In the blur of the photograph, time leaves its gleaming, snail-like track. — Wright Morris

When writing is good, everything is symbolic, but symbolic writing is seldom good. — Wright Morris

After many months of writing, it occured to me that it might be possible to photograph, in the flesh, what I was attempting to capture in words. I bought a Rolleiflex camera and began to take pictures of objects or structures that were used and abused by human hands — Wright Morris

The vast number of photographers, feeding on anything visible, overgraze the landscape the way cattle overgraze their pasture. — Wright Morris

Images proliferate. Am I wrong in being reminded of printing money in a period of wild inflation? Do we know what we are doing? Are we able to evaluate what we have done? — Wright Morris

Writing has made me rich-not in money but in a couple hundred characters out there, whose pursuits and anguish and triumphs I've shared. I am unspeakably grateful at the life I have come to lead. — Wright Morris