Willa Cather Quotes (71 Quotes)

Art should simplify. That is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole.

There seemed to be nothing to see no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.

Where are the loves that we have loved beforeWhen once we are alone, and shut the door

Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin a bloody man, vicious a coarse man, vulgar.

I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge.

Isn't it queer there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before like the larks in this country that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years

No one person knows much more about writing than another. I expect that when people think they know anything about it, then their case is hopeless.

Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world, but here the earth is the floor of the sky.

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.

Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they're in love with somebody.

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.

Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.

That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.

The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.

What was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mold in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself.

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

The sky was a midnight-blue, like warm, deep, blue water, and the moon seemed to lie on it like a water-lily, floating forward with an invisible current.

Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.

When we look back, the only things we cherish are those which in some way met our original want; the desire which formed in us in early youth, undirected, and of its own accord.

The supreme virtue in art is soul, perhaps it is the only thing which gives it the right to be.