Willa Cather Quotes

Beautiful women, whose beauty meant more than it said . . . was their brilliancy always fed by something coarse and concealed? Was that their secret? ~ A Lost Lady by Willa Cather Her husband had archaic ideas about jewels; a man bought them for his wife in acknowledgment of things he could not gracefully utter. ~ A Lost Lady by Willa Cather The sky was a midnight-blue, like warm, deep, blue water, and the moon seemed to lie on it like a water-lily, floating forward with an invisible current. ~ One of Ours by Willa Cather Human love was a wonderful thing, he told himself, and it was most wonderful where it had least to gain. ~ One of Ours by Willa Cather "Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody." ~ My Antonia by Willa Cather 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. ~ My Antonia by Willa Cather 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. ~ My Antonia by Willa Cather Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. ~ My Antonia by Willa Cather "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." ~ O Pioneers! by Willa Cather "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." ~ O Pioneers! by Willa Cather