Give the people a new word and they think they…

Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.

Sourced, Willa Cather on Writing (1949)

“Four Letters: Escapism” (1936)

Other Willa Cather Quotes

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,…
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…
There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. - View Quote Details on There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no…
Where there is great love there are always miracles. - View Quote Details on Where there is great love there are always miracles.
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…
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,…
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…
All the intelligence and talent in the world can’t make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can’t be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens. - View Quote Details on All the intelligence and talent in the world can’t make…
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…
I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of the world. I’d have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister — anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don’t realize it. You really are a part of me. - View Quote Details on I think of you more often than of anyone else…