Willa Cather

"One cannot have even a very pleasant dream without paying for it."

"Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disorientating."

"I felt the pull of the land, the need to stay and defend what was ours."

"A child's life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark."

"Winter comes down on the farm and closes everything in."

"To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent."

"Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it."

"The land belongs to the future."

"Every individual has a locus of control - internal or external."

"I like to walk out in the pastures and look at the land."

"One part of me is always standing in the wings, ready to take over."

"The world is always full of stories, but we must be careful not to interrupt the living to speak of the dead."

"We are the sum of all that has gone before us, be it noble or execrable."

"Drink and dance and laugh and lie, love the reeling midnight through."

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."

"Friends, when they cease to be wholly ours, cease to be friends at all."

"The condition every art requires is freedom from external pressure."

"When we look back, the only things that matter are the moments when we touched each other."

"I want to live and work, but I am afraid of ennui."

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled."

"A feeling of antagonism might still persist, but it was absorbed in a larger feeling of fellowship."

"The unrest of the present time is due to a general disorganization of thought."

"People will live like this and dream like this a long time yet."

"An artist's life is never going to be a well-regulated, methodical sort of thing."

"I have the happy disposition to look for the good in things."

"The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the wide, free gesture, the wind across the prairie."

"It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named that gives high quality to the writing."

"The frontier has never been the place of the strong man alone."

"To plant a field is to believe in tomorrow."

"Every scientist dreams of making a discovery that will benefit humanity."