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All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.

Willa Cather

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Willa Cather
Age: 73 †
Born: 1873
Born: December 7
Died: 1947
Died: April 24
Author
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Willa Sibert Cather
Voice
Singer
Happens
Silver
Thing
Singers
Make
Sport
Like
Wild
World
Intelligence
Captivity
Talent
Bred
Sports
Foxes

More quotes by Willa Cather

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The trees and shrubbery seemed well-groomed and social, like pleasant people.
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Every artist makes herself born. You must bring the artist into the world yourself.
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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.
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She had certain thoughts which were like companions, ideas which were like older and wiser friends.
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The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify - it was like the light of truth itself.
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[Mark Twain] is still the rough, awkward, good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands when he was three years old. Thoroughly likeable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters.
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The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity.
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Miracles surround us at every turn if we but sharpen our perceptions of them.
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From the time the Englishman's bones harden into bones at all, he makes his skeleton a flagstaff, and he early plants his feet like one who is to walk the world and the decks of all the seas.
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[Dawn] is always such a forgiving time. When that first cold, bright streak comes over the water, it's as if all our sins were pardoned as if the sky leaned over the earth and kissed it and gave it absolution.
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I had killed a big snake. I was now a big fellow.
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Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.
Willa Cather
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Today I stood taller from walking among the trees.
Willa Cather
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We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it - for a little while.
Willa Cather
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If you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago.
Willa Cather
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There was a new kind of strength in the gravity of her face, and her colors still gave her that look of deep-seated health and ardor.
Willa Cather
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Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there — that, one might say, is created.
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Too much detail is apt, like any other form of extravagance, to become slightly vulgar.
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A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves.
Willa Cather
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Now that Stevenson is dead I can think of but one English- speaking author who is really keeping his self-respect and sticking forperfection. Of course I refer to that mighty master of language and keen student of human actions and motives, Henry James.
Willa Cather