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
drama emotional giving
Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there - that, one might say, is created. It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named, of the overtone divined by the ear but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or the drama, as well as to poetry itself.
giving noble achieve
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.
distance thinking giving
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.
country giving earth
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.
thinking giving people
Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.
art giving soul
The supreme virtue in art is soul, perhaps it is the only thing which gives it the right to be.
country fiercely five happened human notes repeating singing themselves thousands three
Isn't it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years
earth elsewhere floor roof sky
Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world, but here the earth is the floor of the sky.
anxious detail fight hard landscape rare scarcity trees visit
Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons. It must have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny landscape that made detail so precious.
die entirely felt goodness lay perhaps sun whether
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.
love men
Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they're in love with somebody.
came forward heard holding professor
She heard him give his name, and came forward holding out her hand. "Is it you, indeed, Professor Wilson?
case expect knows people
No one person knows much more about writing than another. I expect that when people think they know anything about it, then their case is hopeless.
build security
No one can build her security on the nobleness of another person