(1908–2000)
U.S. novelist and editor
William Maxwell
Who knows what the day after tomorrow will bring—the very thing we most wanted and haven’t allowed our hearts to hope.
Letter to Eudora Welty, January 24, 1967, in What There Is to Say We Have Said, ed. by Suzanne Marrs (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2011), 213.
New York City is a place where one can weep on the sidewalk in perfect privacy.
So Long, See You Tomorrow (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 131.
When I got home from school I did what I had always done, which was to read, curled up in the window seat in the library or lying flat on my back on the floor with my feet in a chair, in the darkest corner I could find. The house was full of places to read that fitted me like a glove, and I read the same books over and over. Children tend to derive comfort and support from the totally familiar—an umbrella stand, a glass ashtray backed with brightly colored cigar bands, the fire tongs, anything. With the help of these and other commonplace objects—with the help also of the two big elm trees that shaded the house from the heat of the sun, and the trumpet vine by the back door, and the white lilac bush by the dining-room window, and the comfortable wicker porch furniture and the porch swing that contributed its creak…creak…to the sounds of the summer night—I got from one day to the next.
William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 9–10.
Dearest Eudora, what there is to say we have said, in one way or another.
Letter to Eudora Welty, January 15, 1996, in What There Is to Say We Have Said, ed. by Suzanne Marrs (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2011), 440.
My father used to say, of car after car, this is my last LaSalle, or Cadillac, or whatever, but it never was, at least not for longer than he expected. I feel quite sure this is my last book. Unless I am hit on the head with a falling rock and vast reservoirs of hitherto unperceived material are revealed to me. As it stands I feel pretty much that I have left no stone unturned.
Letter to Eudora Welty, December 17, 1990, in What There Is to Say We Have Said, ed. by Suzanne Marrs (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2011), 433.