Willa Cather

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

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

“There is only one big thing-desire. And before it, when it is big, all is little.”

“I tell you, there is no such thing as creative hate!”

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

“The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.”

“That is happiness: to be dissolved into something completely great.”

“Where there is great love, there are always wishes.”

“I am enjoying to a full that period of reflection which is the happiest conclusion to a life of action.”

“Art, it seems to me, should simplify.”

“Where there is great love, there are always miracles.”

“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.”

“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 bee...”

“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 o...”

“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”

“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. At any rate, that is happiness; to be...”

“I guess everybody thinks about old times, even the happiest people.”

“One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Chur...”

“Religion is different from everything else; because in religion seeking is finding.”

“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.”