Willa Cather

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places."

"That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."

"Where there is great love, there are always miracles."

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

"The peculiar quality of a landscape is that it is the only scenery that is worth anything."

"A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves."

"One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance."

"The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy."

"If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter."

"There are some things about which I would like to be remembered."

"The higher processes are all processes of simplification."

"Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for superficial people, or it ought to be true."

"Success is never so interesting as struggle."

"The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter."

"Life began for me when I ceased to admire and began to remember."

"I tell you there is such a thing as creative hate!"

"The most important thing is the land."

"It's a queer thing about life - if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."

"There seems to be something in the human heart which will not be satisfied unless it knows the truth."

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

"One realizes that even the simplest things in life are interesting if one only observes them with enough attention."

"Civilization will not last, investments will not be safe, unless the intellectual property of authors and inventors is protected by law."

"How terrible it is to love something death can touch."

"The test of one's decency is how much one is willing to give up for others."

"Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness."

"Memory is a great betrayer."

"If no one were to speak but those to whom God has given a fluency of tongue and eloquence, the world would be a very quiet place."

"That is the highest happiness I have known."

"The summer moon hangs full above the prairie and makes it as bright as day."

"I shall leave all this presently, and go to my reward."