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 The great pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone, murmurs alone, thinks alone. They do notintrude upon each other. The Navajos are not much in the habit of giving or of asking help. Their language is not a communicative one, and they never attempt an interchange of personality in speech. Over their forests there is the same inexorable reserve. Each tree has its exalted power to bear. Willa Cather distance giving thinking The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free. Willa Cather land lakes doors The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young. Willa Cather communication teaching age I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep. Willa Cather air success sleep Too much detail is apt, like any other form of extravagance, to become slightly vulgar. Willa Cather details extravagance too-much The air was cool enough to make the warm sun pleasant on one's back and shoulders, and so clear that the eye could follow a hawk up and up, into the blazing blue depths of the sky. Willa Cather eye air blue Life began for me, when I ceased to admire and began to remember. Willa Cather admire remember love In this world people have to pay an extortionate price for any exceptional gift whatever. Willa Cather pay people world The "sayings" of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speech - it is a gift from heart to heart. Willa Cather notebook heart attitude 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 sunshine clouds spring Love itself draws on a woman nearly all the bad luck in the world Willa Cather bad-luck luck world I've seen it before. There are women who spread ruin through no fault of theirs, just by being too beautiful, too ful of life and love. They can't help it. Poeple come to them as people go to a warm fire in winter. Willa Cather life-and-love winter beautiful 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. Willa Cather falling-in-love people world No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Willa Cather women persons self-esteem He had been to see Mrs. Erlich just before starting home for the holidays, and found her making German Christmas cakes. She took him into the kitchen and explained the almost holy traditions that governed this complicated cookery. Her excitement and seriousness as she beat and stirred were very pretty, Claude thought. She told off on her fingers the many ingredients, but he believed there were things she did not name: the fragrance of old friendships, the glow of early memories, belief in wonder-working rhymes and songs. Willa Cather christmas song memories Of course Nebraska is a storehouse of literary material. Everywhere is a storehouse of literary material. If a true artist were born in a pigpen and raised in a sty, he would still find plenty of inspiration for his work. The only need is the eye to see. Willa Cather eye artist inspiration It is cremated youth. It is all yours--no one gave it to you. Willa Cather youth The sky was a midnight-blue, like warm, deep, blue water, and the moon seemed to lie on it like a water-lily, floating forward with an invisible current. Willa Cather moon blue lying I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. Willa Cather nature tree way Ah! the terror and the delight of that moment when first we fear ourselves! Until then we have not lived. Willa Cather delight moments firsts
