Willa Cather Quotes
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No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Two people, when they love each other, grow alike in their tastes and habits and pride, but their moral natures (whatever we may mean by that canting expression) are never welded. The base one goes on being base, and the noble one noble, to the end.
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Merely having seen the season change in a country gave one the sense of having been there for a long time.
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The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska.
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Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.
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Happy people do a great deal for their friends.
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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.
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The end is nothing; the road is all.
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He had been to see Mrs. Erlich just before starting home for the holidays, and found her making German Christmas cakes. She took him into the kitchen and explained the almost holy traditions that governed this complicated cookery. Her excitement and seriousness as she beat and stirred were very pretty, Claude thought. She told off on her fingers the many ingredients, but he believed there were things she did not name: the fragrance of old friendships, the glow of early memories, belief in wonder-working rhymes and songs.
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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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Let people go on talking as they like, and we will go on living as we think best.
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In a few hours one could cover that incalculable distance; from the winter country and homely neighbours, to the city where the air trembled like a tuning-fork with unimaginable possibilities.
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The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify - it was like the light of truth itself.
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New things are always ugly.
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A soup like this is not the work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup.
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Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere.
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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.
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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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Personal hatred and family affection are not incompatible; they often flourish and grow strong together.
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I wondered if the life that was right for one was ever right for two!
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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.
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People live through such pain only once. Pain comes again—but it finds a tougher surface.
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From two ears that had grown side by side, the grains of one shot up joyfully into the light, projecting themselves into the future, and the grains from the other lay still in the earth and rotted; and nobody knew why.
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Success is never so interesting as struggle
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I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered –about her teeth for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things she had lost, *but whose inner glow has faded*. Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life.