The emptiness was intense, like the stillness in a great factory when the machinery stops running. Willa Cather More Quotes by Willa Cather More Quotes From Willa Cather To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies. Willa Cather writing character lying 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 cooking made art Ugly accidents happen . . . always have and always will. But the failures are swept back into the pile and forgotten. They don`t leave any lasting scar in the world, and they don`t affect the future. The things that last are the good things. The people who forge ahead and do something, they really count. Willa Cather ugly people world Oh, that's the beauty of the rose, that it blossoms and dies. Willa Cather dies rose A burnt dog dreads the fire. Willa Cather dread fire dog There is often a good deal of the child left in people who have had to grow up too soon. Willa Cather growing-up children people The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. Willa Cather captivity wild-things voice Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches. Willa Cather tree talking bird 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. Willa Cather papa real years The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter. Willa Cather freedom matter art If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate! Willa Cather giving-up hate fire A soup like this is not the work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup. Willa Cather food men years [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. Willa Cather forgiving sky water Prayers said by good people are always good prayers Willa Cather prayer said people 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. Willa Cather wall failure cutting Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past. Willa Cather together-again understood past I wondered if the life that was right for one was ever right for two! Willa Cather ifs two 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 color faces looks The trouble is you almost have to marry a man before you can find out the sort of wife he needs; and usually it's exactly the sort you are not. Willa Cather wife men needs 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!) Willa Cather two-friends pioneers silence
