Willa Cather
I suppose there were moonless nights and dark ones with but a silver shaving and pale stars in the sky, but I remember them all as flooded with the rich indolence of a full moon.Collection: Stars
There was only - spring itself, the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere; in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm high wind - rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive ... If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring.Collection: Spring
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.Collection: Beautiful
Every fine story must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure, a cadence, a quality of voice that is exclusively the writer's own, individual, unique.Collection: Unique
Sometimes," I ventured, "it doesn't occur to boys that their mother was ever young and pretty. . . I couldn't stand it if you boys were inconsiderate, or thought of her as if she were just somebody who looked after you. You see I was very much in love with your mother once, and I know there's nobody like her.Collection: Mother
Love itself draws on a woman nearly all the bad luck in the worldCollection: Luck
I tell you there is such a thing as creative hate.Collection: Hate
A man long accustomed to admire his wife in general, seldom pauses to admire her in a particular gown or attitude, unless his attention is directed to her by the appreciative gaze of another man.Collection: Attitude
Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness.Collection: Growth
This is reality, whether you like it or not--all those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth.Collection: Summer
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.Collection: Christmas
In great misfortunes, people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love--if once one has ever fallen in.Collection: Falling In Love
If [the writer] achieves anything noble, anything enduring, it must be by giving himself absolutely to his material. And this gift of sympathy is his great gift; is the fine thing in him that alone can make his work fine.Collection: Giving
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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: People
Sometimes falling in love may look like pure madness to those not experiencing it but that's only because they're not involved. Just because other people don't understand your feelings doesn't mean they're not real or they're not important. You have to trust yourself. Feel what you feel and don't worry about anyone else. Love is about you and your significant other, remember that.Collection: Falling In Love
Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin.Collection: Art
Only the stupid and the phlegmatic should teach.Collection: Stupid
Merely having seen the season change in a country gave one the sense of having been there for a long time.Collection: Country
She had certain thoughts which were like companions, ideas which were like older and wiser friends.Collection: Ideas
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.Collection: Mistake
Of course Nebraska is a storehouse of literary material. Everywhere is a storehouse of literary material. If a true artist were born in a pigpen and raised in a sty, he would still find plenty of inspiration for his work. The only need is the eye to see.Collection: Inspiration
Late one brilliant April afternoon Professor Lucius Wilson stood at the head of Chestnut Street, looking about him with the pleased air of a man of taste who does not very often get to Boston.Collection: Book
One afternoon late in October of the year 1697, Euclide Auclair, the philosopher apothecary of Quebec, stood on the top of Cap Diamant gazing down the broad, empty river far beneath him.Collection: Book
No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Two people, when they love each other, grow alike in their tastes and habits and pride, but their moral natures (whatever we may mean by that canting expression) are never welded. The base one goes on being base, and the noble one noble, to the end.Collection: Mean
[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.Collection: Boys
New things are always ugly.Collection: Ugly
The heart, when it is too much alive, aches for that brown earth, and ecstasy has no fear of death.Collection: Heart
The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes.Collection: Land
If youth did not matter so much to itself, it would never have the heart to go on.Collection: Heart
The more observing ones may have seen, but discerning people are usually discreet and often kind, for we usually bleed a little before we begin to discern.Collection: People
It is cremated youth. It is all yours--no one gave it to you.Collection: Youth
A burnt dog dreads the fire.Collection: Dog
It is a tragic hour, that hour when we are finally driven to reckon with ourselves, when every avenue of mental distraction has been cut off and our own life and all its ineffaceable failures closes about us like the walls of that old torture chamber of the Inquisition.Collection: Wall
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.Collection: Food
Prayers said by good people are always good prayersCollection: Prayer
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!)Collection: Two Friends
I don’t want anyone reading my writing to think about style. I just want them to be in the story.Collection: Reading
What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself – life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.Collection: Strong