The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor. Willa Cather More Quotes by Willa Cather More Quotes From Willa Cather Personal life becomes paler as the imaginative life becomes richer. Willa Cather imaginative personal-life Let people go on talking as they like, and we will go on living as we think best. Willa Cather talking people thinking Sometimes," I ventured, "it doesn't occur to boys that their mother was ever young and pretty. . . I couldn't stand it if you boys were inconsiderate, or thought of her as if she were just somebody who looked after you. You see I was very much in love with your mother once, and I know there's nobody like her. Willa Cather like-her mother boys 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 earth giving country 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. Willa Cather public-opinion mistake thinking Art, it seems to me, should simplify. Willa Cather simplicity should art We all like people who do things, even if we only see their faces on cigar-box lids. Willa Cather cigar faces people Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all - no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself - a game of make-believe, or re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it. Willa Cather eye believe art Beautiful women, whose beauty meant more than it said... was their brilliancy always fed by something coarse and concealed? Was that their secret? Willa Cather feds secret beautiful Every artist knows that there is no such thing as "freedom" in art. The first thing an artist does when he begins a new work is to lay down the barriers and limitations; he decides upon a certain composition, a certain key, a certain relation of creatures or objects to each other. He is never free, and the more splendid his imagination, the more intense his feeling, the farther he goes from general truth and general emotion. Willa Cather decide-upon keys art There is a popular superstition that "realism" asserts itself in the cataloguing of a great number of material objects, in explaining mechanical processes, the methods of operating manufactories and trades, and in minutely and unsparingly describing physical sensations. But is not realism, more than it is anything else, an attitude of mind on the part of the writer toward his material, a vague indication of the sympathy and candour with which he accepts, rather than chooses, his theme? Willa Cather mind numbers attitude 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. Willa Cather novelists accomplishment writing 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 Willa Cather dark house people The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. Willa Cather pioneers land littles From two ears that had grown side by side, the grains of one shot up joyfully into the light, projecting themselves into the future, and the grains from the other lay still in the earth and rotted; and nobody knew why. Willa Cather light ears two 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. Willa Cather girl summer country 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 achieve noble giving I had killed a big snake. I was now a big fellow. Willa Cather fellows snakes bigs The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify - it was like the light of truth itself. Willa Cather sunset light winter Where there is great love, there are always wishes. Willa Cather
