The Song of the Lark

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

— Willa Cather

“The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing”

— Willa Cather

“People live through such pain only once. Pain comes again”

— Willa Cather

“Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.””

— Willa Cather

“Many a night that summer she left Dr. Archie's office with a desire to run and run about those quiet streets until she wore out her shoes, or wore out the streets themselves; when her chest ached and it seemed as if her heart were spreading all over the desert. When she went home, it was not to go to sleep. She used to drag her mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window -- or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation. It was on such nights that Thea Kronborg learned the thing that old Dumas meant when he told the Romanticists that to make a drama he needed but one passion and four walls.””

— Willa Cather

“I only want impossible things," she said roughly. "The others don't interest me.””

— Willa Cather

“It came over him now that the unexpected favours of fortune, no matter how dazzling, do not mean very much to us. They may excite or divert us for a time, but 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.””

— Willa Cather

“Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing”

— Willa Cather

“Her secret? It is every artist's secret--passion. That is all. It is an open secret, and perfectly safe. Like heroism, it is inimitable in cheap materials.””

— Willa Cather