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Too much detail is apt, like any other form of extravagance, to become slightly vulgar.

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
Much
Like
Extravagance
Detail
Vulgar
Slightly
Details
Form
Become

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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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Beautiful women, whose beauty meant more than it said... was their brilliancy always fed by something coarse and concealed? Was that their secret?
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The air and the earth interpenetrated in the warm gusts of spring the soil was full of sunlight, and the sunlight full of red dust. The air one breathed was saturated with earthy smells, and the grass under foot had a reflection of the blue sky in it.
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Thea was still under the belief that public opinion could be placated that if you clucked often enough, the hens would mistake you for one of themselves.
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Prayers said by good people are always good prayers
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Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.
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Wherever humanity has made that hardest of all starts and lifted itself out of mere brutality is a sacred spot.
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The higher processes are all processes of simplification. The novelist must learn to write, and then he must unlearn it just as the modern painter learns to draw, and then learns when utterly to disregard his accomplishment, when to subordinate it to a higher and truer effect.
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Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere.
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You must not begin to fret about the successes of cheap people. After all, what have they to do with you?
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This land was an enigma. It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces.
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A work-room should be like an old shoe no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.
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The prayers of all good people are good.
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It is cremated youth. It is all yours--no one gave it to you.
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Yet the summer which was to change everything was coming nearer every day. When boys and girls are growing up, life can't stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns and they have to grow up, whether they will or no. That is what their elders are always forgetting.
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Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they are in love with somebody.
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One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away.
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In this world people have to pay an extortionate price for any exceptional gift whatever.
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A burnt dog dreads the fire.
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Winter lies too long in country towns hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.
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