Willa Cather Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.

  Willa Cather

  Father, Home, Men

  Willa Cather (2016). “My çntonia”, p.159, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  20 Copy quote

• People can be lovers and enemies at the same time, you know.

  Willa Cather

  People, Enemy, Lovers

  Willa Cather (2011). “My Mortal Enemy”, p.72, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• It has long been a tradition among novel writers that a book must end by everybody getting just what they wanted, or if the conventional happy ending was impossible, then it must be a tragedy in which one or both should die. In real life very few of us get what we want, our tragedies don't kill us, but we go on living them year after year, carrying them with us like a scar on an old wound.

  Willa Cather

  Real, Book, Writing

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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?

  Willa Cather

  People

  Willa Cather (2013). “The Best of Willa Cather”, p.348, Simon and Schuster

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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.

  Willa Cather

  Forgiveness, Fall, Dark

  Willa Cather (1938). “The novels and stories of Willa Cather ...”

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• Imagination, which is a quality writers must have, does not mean the ability to weave pretty stories out of nothing. In the right sense, imagination is a response to what is going on — a sensitiveness to which outside things appeal. It is a composition of sympathy and observation.

  Willa Cather

  Mean, Imagination, Quality

  Willa Cather (1990). “Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters”, p.15, U of Nebraska Press

  9 Copy quote

• I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

  Willa Cather

  Nature, Tree, Way

  O Pioneers! pt. 2, ch. 8 (1913)

  23 Copy quote

• Too much detail is apt, like any other form of extravagance, to become slightly vulgar.

  Willa Cather

  Details, Extravagance, Too Much

  Willa Cather, Marilee Lindemann (2008). “O Pioneers!”, p.173, Oxford University Press

  10 Copy quote

• I don't want anyone reading my writing to think about style. I just want them to be in the story.

  Willa Cather

  Book, Reading, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• Only solitary men know the full joys of frienship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile, his friends are everything.

  Willa Cather

  Friendship, Men, Joy

  Willa Cather (1938). “The novels and stories of Willa Cather ...”

  8 Copy quote

• A watch is the most essential part of a lecture.

  Willa Cather

  Essentials, Watches, Lectures

  Willa Cather (1990). “Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters”, p.160, U of Nebraska Press

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• Ugly accidents happen . . . always have and always will. But the failures are swept back into the pile and forgotten. They don`t leave any lasting scar in the world, and they don`t affect the future. The things that last are the good things. The people who forge ahead and do something, they really count.

  Willa Cather

  People, World, Ugly

  Willa Cather (2012). “The Song of the Lark”, p.91, Courier Corporation

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• I wondered if the life that was right for one was ever right for two!

  Willa Cather

  Two, Ifs

  Willa Cather (2012). “My Ántonia”, p.190, Courier Corporation

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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.

  Willa Cather

  Lying, Writing, Character

  Willa Cather (1988). “Not Under Forty”, p.81, U of Nebraska Press

  15 Copy quote

• In New Mexico, he always awoke a young man, not until he arose and began to shave did he realize that he was growing older. His first consciousness was a sense of the light dry wind blowing in through the windows, with the fragrance of hot sun and sage-brush and sweet clover; a wind that made one's body feel light and one's heart cry 'To-day, to-day,' like a child's.

  Willa Cather

  Love, Sweet, Children

  Willa Cather (2008). “Death Comes for the Archbishop”, p.293, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• In this world people have to pay an extortionate price for any exceptional gift whatever.

  Willa Cather

  People, World, Pay

  Willa Cather (1992). “Stories, Poems, and Other Writings”

  9 Copy quote

• The irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.

  Willa Cather

  Hands, Quality, Intimate

  1927 Death Comes to the Archbishop, bk.1, ch.3.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Willa Cather

  Mean, Cities, Rolling

  Willa Cather (2015). “O Pioneers”, p.61, Xist Publishing

  15 Copy quote

• The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free.

  Willa Cather

  Lakes, Doors, Land

  Willa Cather (2002). “The Professor's House”, p.31, U of Nebraska Press

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• [Some] people really expect the passion of love to fill and gratify every need of life, whereas nature only intended that it should meet one of many demands. They insist on making it stand for all the emotional pleasures of life and art; expecting an individual and self-limited passion to yield infinite variety, pleasure, and distraction, and to contribute to their lives what the arts and the pleasurable exercise of the intellect gives to less limited and less intense idealists.

  Willa Cather

  Art, Passion, Exercise

  Willa Cather (2013). “The Essential Willa Cather Collection”, p.331, eBookIt.com

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• Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand - a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods - or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

  Willa Cather

  Art, Writing, Breakfast Food

  Willa Cather (1988). “Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art”, p.103, U of Nebraska Press

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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.

  Willa Cather

  Notebook, Attitude, Heart

  Willa Cather (1988). “Not Under Forty”, p.83, U of Nebraska Press

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• Money is a protection, a cloak; it can buy one quiet, and some sort of dignity.

  Willa Cather

  Dignity, Quiet, Protection

  Willa Cather (2011). “My Mortal Enemy”, p.57, Vintage

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• No nation has ever produced great art that has not made a high art of cookery, because art appeals primarily to the senses.

  Willa Cather

  Art, Cooking, Made

  Willa Cather (1990). “Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters”, p.146, U of Nebraska Press

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• For ever and anon the soul becomes weary of the conventions that are not of it, and with a single stroke shatters the civilized lies with which it is unable to cope, and the strong arm reaches out and takes by force what it cannot win by cunning.

  Willa Cather

  Strong, Lying, Winning

  Willa Cather (2000). “The Troll Garden: Short Stories”, p.18, U of Nebraska Press

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