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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

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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
Early
Youth
Undirected
Desire
Accord
Back
Formed
Look
Cherish
Looks
Originals
Way
Original
Things
Mets

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Religion is different from everything else because in religion seeking is finding.
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There was only - spring itself, the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm high wind - rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive ... If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring.
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It is scarcely exaggeration to say that if one is not a little mad about Balzac at twenty, one will never live and if at forty one can still take Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempre at Balzac's own estimate, one has lived in vain.
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Look at my papa here he's been dead all these years, and yet he is more real to me than almost anybody else. He never goes out of my life. I talk to him and consult him all the time. The older I grow, the better I know him and the more I understand him.
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People always think the bread of another country is better than their own.
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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.
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What if - what if Life itself were the sweetheart?
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Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark.
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In this world people have to pay an extortionate price for any exceptional gift whatever.
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The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.
Willa Cather
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The emptiness was intense, like the stillness in a great factory when the machinery stops running.
Willa Cather
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Pity is sworn servant unto love: And this be sure, wherever it begin To make the way, it lets your master in.
Willa Cather
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Hunger is a powerful incentive to introspection.
Willa Cather
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I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.
Willa Cather
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Alexandra sighed. I have a feeling that if you go away, you will not come back. Something will happen to one of us, or to both. People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find. What I have is yours if you care enough about me to take it.
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The revolt against individualism naturally calls artists severely to account, because the artist is of all men the most individual those who were not have been long forgotten.
Willa Cather
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In great misfortunes, people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love--if once one has ever fallen in.
Willa Cather
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The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
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The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.
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I have not much faith in women in fiction.... Women are so horribly subjective and they have such scorn for the healthy commonplace. When a woman writes a story of adventure, a stout sea tale, a manly battle yarn, anything without wine, women, and love, then I will begin to hope for something great from them, not before.
Willa Cather