Willa Cather Quotes
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The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska.
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To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent.
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I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now.
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Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.
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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 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.
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She had certain thoughts which were like companions, ideas which were like older and wiser friends.
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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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Some things are best learned in calm, others in storm.
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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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If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry
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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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There is something frank and joyous and young in the open face of the country. It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of the season, holding nothing back.
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He domesticated and developed the native wild flowers. He had one hill-side solidly clad with that low-growing purple verbena which mats over the hills of New Mexico. It was like a great violet velvet mantle thrown down in the sun; all the shades that the dyers and weavers of Italy and France strove for through centuries, the violet that is full of rose colour and is yet not lavender; the blue that becomes almost pink and then retreats again into sea-dark purple—the true Episcopal colour and countless variations of it.
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It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled.
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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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How terrible it was to love people when you could not really share their lives!
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The two friends stood for a few moments on the windy street corner, not speaking a word, as two travelers, who have lost their way, sometimes stand and admit their perplexity in silence. (O Pioneers!)
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The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.
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Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing.
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Thea was still under the belief that public opinion could be placated; that if you clucked often enough, the hens would mistake you for one of themselves.
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Prayers said by good people are always good prayers
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[Dawn] is always such a forgiving time. When that first cold, bright streak comes over the water, it's as if all our sins were pardoned; as if the sky leaned over the earth and kissed it and gave it absolution.
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The great pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone, murmurs alone, thinks alone. They do notintrude upon each other. The Navajos are not much in the habit of giving or of asking help. Their language is not a communicative one, and they never attempt an interchange of personality in speech. Over their forests there is the same inexorable reserve. Each tree has its exalted power to bear.