Willa Cather Quotes
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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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Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer.
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Personal hatred and family affection are not incompatible; they often flourish and grow strong together.
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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.
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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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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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Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there — that, one might say, is created.
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Today I stood taller from walking among the trees.
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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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New things are always ugly.
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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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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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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.
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I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now.
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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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The end is nothing; the road is all.
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People live through such pain only once. Pain comes again—but it finds a tougher surface.
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"More than him has done that," said Antonia sadly, and the girls murmured assent.
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It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of.
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The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska.
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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.