Willa Cather Quotes

Now everything was in ruins. The air was still and cold like the air in a refrigerating-room. What I felt was fear; I was afraid to look or speak or move. Everything about me seemed evil. When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck; we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless. - View Quote Details on Now everything was in ruins. The air was still and…
Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. - View Quote Details on Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a…
Where there is great love there are always miracles. - View Quote Details on Where there is great love there are always miracles.
Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves. - View Quote Details on Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for…
Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had. - View Quote Details on Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the…
One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day, though they are not down in the list of subjects from which the conventional novelist works. - View Quote Details on One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of…
As I confronted her, the changes grew less apparent to me, her identity stronger. She was there, in the full vigour of her personality, battered but not diminished, looking at me, speaking to me in the husky, breathy voice I remembered so well. - View Quote Details on As I confronted her, the changes grew less apparent to…
Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past. - View Quote Details on Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the…
Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand — a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods — or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values. - View Quote Details on Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for…
His misfortune was that he loved youth — he was weak to it, it kindled him. If there was one eager eye, one doubting, critical mind, one lively curiosity in a whole lecture-room full of commonplace boys and girls, he was its servant. That ardour could command him. It hadn’t worn out with years, this responsiveness, any more than the magnetic currents wear out; it had nothing to do with Time. - View Quote Details on His misfortune was that he loved youth — he was…
Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another — secret and passionate and intense — which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him. - View Quote Details on Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the…
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. - View Quote Details on I like trees because they seem more resigned to the…
The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman. - View Quote Details on The history of every country begins in the heart of…
The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still, — and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one’s feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky! - View Quote Details on The sky was as full of motion and change as…
Of course it [football] is brutal. So is Homer brutal, and Tolstoi. - View Quote Details on Of course it [football] is brutal. So is Homer brutal,…
One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world’s end somewhere, and hold fast to the days, as to fortune or fame. - View Quote Details on One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make…
Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire. - View Quote Details on Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires…
On starlight nights I used to pace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side, with their storm-windows and covered back porches. They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed to me made up of evasions and negations; shifts to save cooking, to save washing and cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue of gossip. This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny. People’s speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark. - View Quote Details on On starlight nights I used to pace up and down…
The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman. - View Quote Details on The history of every country begins in the heart of…
Alexandra drew her shawl closer about her and stood leaning against the frame of the mill, looking at the stars which glittered so keenly through the frosty autumn air. She always loved to watch them, to think of their vastness and distance, and of their ordered march. It fortified her to reflect upon the great operations of nature, and when she thought of the law that lay behind them, she felt a sense of personal security. - View Quote Details on Alexandra drew her shawl closer about her and stood leaning…
I am sure I do not know why the beauty of Monte Carlo should not satisfy more than it does. The bluest of all seas is nowhere bluer than when you see it between the marble balustrades of the long white terrace before the casino, palms are nowhere greener than in that high garden which the mountain screen from every unkind breath, no colours could be more rich and various than those of the red and purple Alps that tower up behind the town, on whose summit such violent thunderstorms gather and break. But for me, at least, there was not at all the pleasure I had anticipated in this dazzling white and blue, these feathery palms and ragged Alps….I had a continual restless feeling that there was nothing at all real about Monte Carlo; that the sea was too blue to be wet, the casino too white to be anything but pasteboard, and that from their very greenness the palms must be cotton…. in atmosphere and spirit the entire kingdom of Monaco is an extension of the casino. - View Quote Details on I am sure I do not know why the beauty…
Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer. - View Quote Details on Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder…
In New Mexico he always awoke a young man…Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up to him for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests… That air would disappear from the whole earth in time, perhaps; but long after his day. He did not know just when it had become so necessary to him, but he had come back to die in exile for the sake of it. Something soft and wild and free, something that whispered to the ear on the pillow, lightened the heart, softly, softly picked the lock, slid the bolts, and released the prisoned spirit of man into the wind, into the blue and gold, into the morning, into the morning! - View Quote Details on In New Mexico he always awoke a young man…Beautiful surroundings,…
The “sayings” of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speech — it is a gift from heart to heart. - View Quote Details on The “sayings” of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic…
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young. - View Quote Details on The dead might as well try to speak to the…
The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy. When it flung wide its cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at evening, it left behind it a spent and exhausted world. - View Quote Details on The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated…
Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening. - View Quote Details on Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the…
The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysis that makes him first-rate. - View Quote Details on The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined,…
I ain’t got time to learn. I can work like mans now. - View Quote Details on I ain’t got time to learn. I can work like…
The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free. - View Quote Details on The great fact in life, the always possible escape from…
Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family — but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything. - View Quote Details on Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others…
If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don’t care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations. - View Quote Details on If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but…
From the time the Englishman’s bones harden into bones at all, he makes his skeleton a flagstaff, and he early plants his feet like one who is to walk the world and the decks of all the seas. (16 September 1902) - View Quote Details on From the time the Englishman’s bones harden into bones at…
To note an artist’s limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies. - View Quote Details on To note an artist’s limitations is but to define his…
To people off alone, as we were, there is something stirring about finding evidences of human labour and care in the soil of an empty country. It comes to you as a sort of message, makes you feel differently about the ground you walk over every day. - View Quote Details on To people off alone, as we were, there is something…
She used to drag her mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window— or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation. - View Quote Details on She used to drag her mattress beside her low window…
Art, it seems to me, should simplify finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole— so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader’s consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page. - View Quote Details on Art, it seems to me, should simplify finding what conventions…
There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years. - View Quote Details on There are only two or three human stories, and they…
She had never known before how much the country meant to her. The chirping of the insects in the long grass had been like the sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring. - View Quote Details on She had never known before how much the country meant…
That irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand. - View Quote Details on That irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by…
Father Latour judged that, just as it was the white man’s way to assert himself in any landscape, to change it, make it over a little (at least to leave some mark of memorial of his sojourn), it was the Indian’s way to pass through a country without disturbing anything; to pass and leave no trace, like fish through the water, or birds through the air.
It was the Indian manner to vanish into the landscape, not to stand out against it. The Hopi villages that were set upon rock mesas were made to look like the rock on which they sat, were imperceptible at a distance. - View Quote Details on Father Latour judged that, just as it was the white…
Cleric said he thought Virgil, when he was dying at Brindisi, must have remembered that passage. After he had faced the bitter fact that he was to leave the ‘Aeneid’ unfinished, and had decreed that the great canvas, crowded with figures of gods and men, should be burned rather than survive him unperfected, then his mind must have gone back to the perfect utterance of the ‘Georgics,’ where the pen was fitted to the matter as the plough is to the furrow; and he must have said to himself, with the thankfulness of a good man, ‘I was the first to bring the Muse into my country.’ - View Quote Details on Cleric said he thought Virgil, when he was dying at…
Beautiful women, whose beauty meant more than it said… was their brilliancy always fed by something coarse and concealed? Was that their secret? - View Quote Details on Beautiful women, whose beauty meant more than it said… was…
We were at last in Monte Cristo’s country, fairly into the country of the fabulous, where extravagance ceases to exist because everything is extravagant, and where the wildest dreams come true. - View Quote Details on We were at last in Monte Cristo’s country, fairly into…
Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole — so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader’s consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page. - View Quote Details on Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is…
As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world.
In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there. - View Quote Details on As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped…
Nearly all the Escapists in the long past have managed their own budget and their social relations so unsuccessfully that I wouldn’t want them for my landlords, or my bankers, or my neighbors. They were valuable, like powerful stimulants, only when they were left out of the social and industrial routine. - View Quote Details on Nearly all the Escapists in the long past have managed…
When we look back, the only things we cherish are those which in some way met our original want; the desire which formed in us in early youth, undirected, and of its own accord. - View Quote Details on When we look back, the only things we cherish are…
“In great misfortunes,” he told himself, “people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love — if once one has ever fallen in.”
Falling out, for him, seemed to mean falling out of all domestic and social relations, out of his place in the human family, indeed. - View Quote Details on “In great misfortunes,” he told himself, “people want to be…