491 Quotes by Willa Cather

I believed devoutly in her power to fascinate him, in her dazzling loveliness. I believed her young, ardent, reckless, disillusioned, under sentence, feverish, avid of pleasure.

In great misfortunes, people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love – if once one has ever fallen in.

Her sarcasm was so quick, so fine at the point – it was like being touched by metal so cold that one doesn’t know whether one is burned or chilled.

To note an artist’s limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

She laughed her mellow, easy laugh, that was either very artless or very comprehending, one never quite knew which.

But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy’s mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness.

Some people’s lives are affected by what happens to their person or their property; but for others fate is what happens to their feelings and their thoughts – that and nothing more.

Her interest in these people was more than a business interest. She carried them all in her mind as if they were characters in a book or a play. When.

It is easy to pity when once one’s vanity has been tickled.