Willa Cather

Willa Cather
Willa Sibert Catherwas an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a novel set during World War I...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 December 1873
CountryUnited States of America
shoes matter rooms
A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.
spring reflection air
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.
art giving soul
The supreme virtue in art is soul, perhaps it is the only thing which gives it the right to be.
men age goes-on
The world is always full of brilliant youth which fades into grey and embittered middle age: the first flowering takes everything. The great men are those who have developed slowly, or who have been able to survive the glamour of their early florescence and to go on learning from life.
voice captivity wild-things
The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity.
forgiveness fall dark
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.
mean cities would-be
Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing.
girl ambition facts
The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.
men exaggeration-is foolish-man
Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar.
inspirational summer nature
There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.
kindness people moments
When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck; we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless.
desire want way
When we look back, the only things we cherish are those which in some way met our original want; the desire which formed in us in early youth, undirected, and of its own accord.
dream men youth
To fulfil the dreams of one's youth; that is the best that can happen to a man. No worldly success can take the place of that.
country stars land
There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.