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

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

Willa Cather

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

Willa Cather

Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.

Willa Cather

Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves.

Willa Cather

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

Willa Cather

A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.

Willa Cather

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

Willa Cather

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.

Willa Cather

The irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.

Willa Cather

Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.

Willa Cather

Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.

Willa Cather

What was any art but a mold to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself- life hurrying past us and running away, to strong to stop, too sweet to lose.

Willa Cather

There was a basic harmony between Antonia and her mistress [Mrs. Harling]. They had strong, independent natures, both of them. They knew what they liked, and were not always trying to imitate other people. They loved children and animals and music, a...

Willa Cather

Miracles surround us at every turn, if we but sharpen our perceptions to them.

Willa Cather

I shall do nothing to discourage my patient, Monseigneur, any more than I shall bleed him, as many good people urge me to do. The mind, too, has a kind of blood; in common speech we call it hope.

Willa Cather

Where there is great love, there are always miracles.

Willa Cather

Have the last word ma'm," he said cheerfully. "It's a lady's privilege.

Willa Cather

Pittsburgh was even more vital, more creative, more hungry for culture than New York. Pittsburgh was the birthplace of my writing.

Willa Cather

Don't you feel that at this rate there isn't much in it? In what? In living at all, going on as we do. What do we get out of it? Take a day like this: you waken up in the morning and you're glad to be alive; it's a good enough day for anything, and y...

Willa Cather

Prayers said by good people are always good prayers

Willa Cather

Oh, that's the beauty of the rose, that it blossoms and dies.

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