Quotes by Willa Cather

About Willa Cather:

Willa Sibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918). In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Here too was the terrifying fixed curve of the infinite, the creeping curve of logic which at least must become the final signpost at the edge of nothing. After that - the deluge. The great white light of annihilation. The bright flash of death... ("...

Willa Cather

What an incomparable creature is the sea! ("Absolute Evil")

Willa Cather

When our poor, faultily sensitive vision can perceive a thing, we say that it is visible. When the nerves of touch can feel it, we say that it is tangible. Yet I tell you there are beings intangible to our physical sense, yet whose presence is felt b...

Willa Cather

A crimson fire that vanquishes the stars;A pungent odor from the dusty sage;A sudden stirring of the huddled herds;A breaking of the distant table-landsThrough purple mists ascending, and the flareOf water ditches silver in the light;A swift, bright ...

Willa Cather

...the natures of solitary people are apt to have more unmapped country in them than worldly folk imagine. They see and think and do things peculiar to themselves, and one may turn up buried treasure in them at any moment. ("Absolute Evil")

Willa Cather

Probably our lives are full of symbols which only an unacknowledged sense perceives. Spiritual events assume a material guise, in accordance with some creative principle, but do not insist on recognition. ("Absolute Evil")

Willa Cather

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.

Willa Cather

The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter.

Willa Cather

All Southern women wished of their menfolk was simply to be 'like Paris handsome and like Hector brave'.

Willa Cather

Her secret? It is every artist's secret--passion. That is all. It is an open secret, and perfectly safe. Like heroism, it is inimitable in cheap materials.

Willa Cather

The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.

Willa Cather

He knew he would always remember her, standing there with that expectant, forward-looking smile, enough to turn the future into summer.

Willa Cather

He used to say that he never felt the hardness of the human struggle or the sadness of history as he felt it among those ruins. He used to say, too, that it made one feel an obligation to do one's best.

Willa Cather

It's all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies; our enemies can never hurt us very much. But oh, what about forgiving our friends?

Willa Cather

Yes, and because we grow old we become more and more the stuff our forbears put into us. I can feel his savagery strengthen in me. We think we are so individual and so misunderstood when we are young; but the nature our strain of blood carries is ins...

Willa Cather

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

Willa Cather

And I advise ye to think well, he told her It's better to be a stray dog in this world than a man without money. I've tried it both ways, and I know. A poor man stinks, and God hates him.

Willa Cather

Some memories are realities and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

Willa Cather

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

Willa Cather

While the train flashed through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red dust lay deep over every...

Willa Cather

Author Bio

  • NameWilla Cather
  • DescriptionNovelist, short story writer, poet, essayist
  • BornDecember 7, 1873
  • DiedApril 24, 1947
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Poet; Novelist; Journalist; Essayist
  • AwardsNational Women's Hall Of Fame