Willa Cather (1873-1947)

Quotes

• She used to drag her mattress besider her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window - or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that is was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation.

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

• The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.

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

• Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons. It must have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny landscape that made detail so precious.

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

• No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.

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

• The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.