All the intelligence and talent in the world can’t make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can’t be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens. – Willa Cather
The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always. – Willa Cather
The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper whether little or great, it belongs to Literature. – Willa Cather
Only solitary men know the full joys of frienship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile, his friends are everything. – Willa Cather
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. – Willa Cather
When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck; we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless. – Willa Cather
Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. – Willa Cather
Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again. – Willa Cather
The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter. – Willa Cather
Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement. – Willa Cather
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. – Willa Cather
Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening. – Willa Cather
The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy. When it flung wide its cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at evening, it left behind it a spent and exhausted world. – Willa Cather
Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer. – Willa Cather
A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it’s better than a new one. – Willa Cather
It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of. – Willa Cather
There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before. – Willa Cather
The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. – Willa Cather
The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own. – Willa Cather