Quote

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

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I don't want anyone reading my writing to think about style. I just want them to be in the story.
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Loyal? As loyal as anyone who plays second fiddle ever is.
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No nation has ever produced great art that has not made a high art of cookery, because art appeals primarily to the senses.
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The two friends stood for a few moments on the windy street corner, not speaking a word, as two travelers, who have lost their way, sometimes stand and admit their perplexity in silence. (O Pioneers!)
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She had certain thoughts which were like companions, ideas which were like older and wiser friends.
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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.
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In Haverford on the Platte the townspeople still talk of Lucy Gayheart.
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The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy. When it flung wide its cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at evening, it left behind it a spent and exhausted world.
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After all, the supreme virtue in all art is soul, perhaps it is the only thing which gives art a right to be.
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The irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.
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A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves.
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Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together.
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The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.
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If [the writer] achieves anything noble, anything enduring, it must be by giving himself absolutely to his material. And this gift of sympathy is his great gift is the fine thing in him that alone can make his work fine.
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It is a tragic hour, that hour when we are finally driven to reckon with ourselves, when every avenue of mental distraction has been cut off and our own life and all its ineffaceable failures closes about us like the walls of that old torture chamber of the Inquisition.
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On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice.
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That is happiness to be dissolved into something complete and great.
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A man long accustomed to admire his wife in general, seldom pauses to admire her in a particular gown or attitude, unless his attention is directed to her by the appreciative gaze of another man.
Willa Cather
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Even the wicked get worse than they deserve.
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The emptiness was intense, like the stillness in a great factory when the machinery stops running.
Willa Cather