Willa Cather

"I would rather have one sharp, vivid memory than many indifferent ones."

"The ugliest thing in America is the desire to do what everybody else is doing."

"A person often speaks in a reverent tone of his childhood, long past."

"All the intelligence and talent in the world cannot make a writer successful unless he has sympathy and feeling for humanity."

"I always notice that this happens to us, we dream of the love that we want and need."

"The world is always breaking some one of us; we are always getting born again."

"Her pride had always been aggressive, a sort of fighting thing."

"There is something in the moment when a great story comes alive within you."

"The land keeps faith with those who keep faith with it."

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

"Everything that is valuable takes time."

"It is the lot of man to suffer - or so it has been said."

"Science and art sometimes make discoveries that are of immediate benefit to everyone."

"How can it be winter when the heart is full of hope?"

"The spirit of man can endure only so much and no more."

"Every civilization has its creative geniuses and its destroyers."

"One can ignore the world if one wants to."

"The precious, the rare, the to-be-longed-for should never be cheap or easy to come by."

"To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever."

"I have always believed that ours is a big country - big enough to have more than one kind of greatness."

"The miracles of the world are not diminished by our understanding of the world."

"All our mistakes in life come from the desire to keep our dignity and respect."

"I like to think of myself as a writer of the land."

"The strength of nations lies not in their weapons but in their character."

"One principle I have held throughout my life is to listen to what people have to say."

"Every artist makes himself born; it is very much harder than the other time."

"Sometimes I think it must be rather a luxury to be a man."

"The world is, of course, never the same after a war."

"To be artistic means to participate in a kind of endless creation."

"Life has never been easy for any of us, and I don't suppose it ever will be."