Eavesdrop on one of the most celebrated literary friendships in American letters

"An epistolary feast for literary fans [and] a confidence booster for aspiring writers everywhere. A-" --Entertainment Weekly

"If friendship is an art, this volume is its masterpiece." --Lee Smith

"A remarkable testimony to friendship, literature, and an abiding love of life." --Richmond Times-Dispatch

What There Is to Say We Have Said bears witness to Welty and Maxwell's more than fifty years of friendship and their lives as writers and readers. It serves as a chronicle of their literary world, their talk of Katherine Anne Porter, Salinger, Dinesen, Updike, Percy, Cheever, and more. Through more than three hundred letters, Marrs brings us the story of a true, deep friendship and an homage to the forgotten art of letter writing.

"A vivid picture of twentieth-century intellectual life and a record of a remarkable friendship... Glorious." --Houston Chronicle

"Full of great tidbits about The New Yorker back in the day ... Charming." --The New Yorker

"These letters evoke a lost world when events moved a bit more slowly, and friends could take the time to be both eloquently witty and generous with each other, and letters were unobtrusively artful about daily life. Welty and Maxwell are like two birds of the same species, calling to each other across the distances." --Charles Baxter