Willa Cather Quotes
An American authors, known for her depictions of US life in her novels.
(1873 - 1947)
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A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.
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All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.
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Art, it seems to me, should simplify.
[Simplicity]
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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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Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer.
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Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.
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I am enjoying to a full that period of reflection which is the happiest conclusion to a life of action.
[Happiness]
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I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
[Acceptance]
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I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.
[Death]
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I tell you, there is no such thing as creative hate!
[Forgiveness]
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In this world people have to pay an extortionate price for any exceptional gift whatever.
[Talent]
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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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Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.
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No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.
[Security]
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Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.
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Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.
[Friendship]
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Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.
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Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
[The Past]
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Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves.
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Sometimes I wonder why God ever trusts talent in the hands of women, they usually make such an infernal mess of it. I think He must do it as a sort of ghastly joke.
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