491 Quotes by Willa Cather

The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity.

Happy people do a great deal for their friends.

Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing.

Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world, but here the earth is the floor of the sky.

Your vivid, exciting companionship in the office must not be your audience, you must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.

Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar.

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

When the eyes of the flesh are shut, the eyes of the spirit are open.

To fulfil the dreams of one's youth; that is the best that can happen to a man. No worldly success can take the place of that.