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Pittsburgh was even more vital, more creative, more hungry for culture than New York. Pittsburgh was the birthplace of my writing.
Willa Cather -
I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now.
Willa Cather
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The more observing ones may have seen, but discerning people are usually discreet and often kind, for we usually bleed a little before we begin to discern.
Willa Cather -
Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
Willa Cather -
Your vivid, exciting companionship in the office must not be your audience, you must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.
Willa Cather -
No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.
Willa Cather -
Old people, who have felt blows and toil and known the world's hard hand, need, even more than children do, a woman's tenderness.
Willa Cather -
That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.
Willa Cather
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I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light and air abot me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would only be sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass.
Willa Cather -
The end is nothing; the road is all.
Willa Cather -
Imagination, which is a quality writers must have, does not mean the ability to weave pretty stories out of nothing. In the right sense, imagination is a response to what is going on — a sensitiveness to which outside things appeal. It is a composition of sympathy and observation.
Willa Cather -
The prayers of all good people are good.
Willa Cather -
The revolt against individualism naturally calls artists severely to account, because the artist is of all men the most individual; those who were not have been long forgotten.
Willa Cather -
There was a new kind of strength in the gravity of her face, and her colors still gave her that look of deep-seated health and ardor.
Willa Cather
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If you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago.
Willa Cather -
I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.
Willa Cather -
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.
Willa Cather -
Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer.
Willa Cather -
A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.
Willa Cather -
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.
Willa Cather
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If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate! “A contempt that drives you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever knew you could be.
Willa Cather -
Sometimes falling in love may look like pure madness to those not experiencing it but that's only because they're not involved. Just because other people don't understand your feelings doesn't mean they're not real or they're not important. You have to trust yourself. Feel what you feel and don't worry about anyone else. Love is about you and your significant other, remember that.
Willa Cather -
Henry Colbert, the miller, always breakfasted with his wife--beyond that he appeared irregularly at the family table.
Willa Cather -
To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent.
Willa Cather