Willa Cather Quotes
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I suppose there were moonless nights and dark ones with but a silver shaving and pale stars in the sky, but I remember them all as flooded with the rich indolence of a full moon.
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I have not much faith in women in fiction.... Women are so horribly subjective and they have such scorn for the healthy commonplace. When a woman writes a story of adventure, a stout sea tale, a manly battle yarn, anything without wine, women, and love, then I will begin to hope for something great from them, not before.
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Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer.
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The end is nothing; the road is all.
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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.
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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.
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Personal hatred and family affection are not incompatible; they often flourish and grow strong together.
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New things are always ugly.
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The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter.
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"More than him has done that," said Antonia sadly, and the girls murmured assent.
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That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.
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Only a Woman, divine, could know all that a woman can suffer.
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Now that Stevenson is dead I can think of but one English- speaking author who is really keeping his self-respect and sticking forperfection. Of course I refer to that mighty master of language and keen student of human actions and motives, Henry James.
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[Mark Twain] is still the rough, awkward, good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands when he was three years old. Thoroughly likeable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters.
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A creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.
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Pity is sworn servant unto love: And this be sure, wherever it begin To make the way, it lets your master in.
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Setting ... is accident. Either a building is part of a place, or it is not. Once that kinship is there, time will only make it stronger.
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To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent.
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Today I stood taller from walking among the trees.
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The trouble is you almost have to marry a man before you can find out the sort of wife he needs; and usually it's exactly the sort you are not.
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Nothing mattered ... but writing books, and living the kind of life that made it possible to write them.
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She had certain thoughts which were like companions, ideas which were like older and wiser friends.
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I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now.
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But she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions. It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.