Quotes by Willa Cather

The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify - it was like the light of truth itself. When the smoky clouds hung low in the west and the red sun went down behind them, leaving a pink flush on the snowy roofs and the blue drifts, then the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter song, as if it said This is reality, whether you like it or not. All those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth. It was as if we were being punished for loving the loveliness of summer.

Most beautiful of all was the tarnished gold of the elms, with a little brown in it, a little bronze, a little blue, even-- a blue like amethyst, which made them melt into the azure haze with a kind of happiness, a harmony of mood that filled the air with content.

Pittsburgh was even more vital, more creative, more hungry for culture than New York. Pittsburgh was the birthplace of my writing.

No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.

Dont you feel that at this rate there isnt much in it? In what? In living at all, going on as we do. What do we get out of it? Take a day like this: you waken up in the morning and youre glad to be alive; its a good enough day for anything, and you feel sure something will happen. Well, whether its a workday or a holiday, its all the same in the end. At night you go to bed - nothing has happened.

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

There are some things you learn best in calm and some in storm.

There is only one big thing-desire. And before it when it is big all is little.

I tell you there is no such thing as creative hate!

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.

The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.

That is happiness: to be dissolved into something completely great.

Where there is great love there are always wishes.

I am enjoying to a full that period of reflection which is the happiest conclusion to a life of action.

No one can builu her security upon the nobleness of another person.

Art it seems to me should simplify.

In this world people have to pay an extortionate price for any exceptional gift whatever.

Some memories are realities and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.

I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.