Willa Cather Quotes
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It takes a great deal of experience to become natural.
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The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.
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Every artist makes herself born. You must bring the artist into the world yourself.
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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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You must not begin to fret about the successes of cheap people. After all, what have they to do with you?
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The land belongs to the future.
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A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves.
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Too much information is rather deadening.
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One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day, though they are not down in the list of subjects from which the conventional novelist works.
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Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches.
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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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I've seen it before. There are women who spread ruin through no fault of theirs, just by being too beautiful, too ful of life and love. They can't help it. Poeple come to them as people go to a warm fire in winter.
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Human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them.
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How terrible it was to love people when you could not really share their lives!
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Alexandra sighed. "I have a feeling that if you go away, you will not come back. Something will happen to one of us, or to both. People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find. What I have is yours if you care enough about me to take it.
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Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.
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Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.
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Oh, that's the beauty of the rose, that it blossoms and dies.
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I don't want anyone reading my writing to think about style. I just want them to be in the story.
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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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If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry
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A child's attitude toward everything is an artist's attitude.