Quotes by Willa Cather

“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.””

“It's all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies; our enemies can never hurt us very much. But oh, what about forgiving our friends?””

“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.””

“The old man smiled. 'I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.””

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

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

“Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.””

“Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.””

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

“I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I begin just where I left off.””

“Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.””

“I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered-- about her teeth, for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life.””

“I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister--anything a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me.””