Quote

Nothing mattered ... but writing books, and living the kind of life that made it possible to write them.

Willa Cather

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Willa Cather
Age: 73 †
Born: 1873
Born: December 7
Died: 1947
Died: April 24
Author
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Willa Sibert Cather
Made
Mattered
Kind
Books
Life
Possible
Living
Write
Book
Nothing
Writing

More quotes by Willa Cather

Image
Only a Woman, divine, could know all that a woman can suffer.
Willa Cather
Image
An artist's saddest secrets are those that have to do with his artistry.
Willa Cather
Image
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
Image
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.
Willa Cather
Image
It takes a great deal of experience to become natural.
Willa Cather
Image
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.
Willa Cather
Image
There is something frank and joyous and young in the open face of the country. It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of the season, holding nothing back.
Willa Cather
Image
Love itself draws on a woman nearly all the bad luck in the world
Willa Cather
Image
More than him has done that, said Antonia sadly, and the girls murmured assent.
Willa Cather
Image
People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find.
Willa Cather
Image
No nation has ever produced great art that has not made a high art of cookery, because art appeals primarily to the senses.
Willa Cather
Image
The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.
Willa Cather
Image
Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones.
Willa Cather
Image
In Haverford on the Platte the townspeople still talk of Lucy Gayheart.
Willa Cather
Image
The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.
Willa Cather
Image
To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent.
Willa Cather
Image
In a few hours one could cover that incalculable distance from the winter country and homely neighbours, to the city where the air trembled like a tuning-fork with unimaginable possibilities.
Willa Cather
Image
It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled.
Willa Cather
Image
What if - what if Life itself were the sweetheart?
Willa Cather
Image
The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.
Willa Cather