Willa Cather

The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.

Where there is great love, there are always wishes.

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile, his friends are everything.

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.

That is happiness to be dissolved into something complete and great.

I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.

One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me not to rest 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.

Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.

Some memories are realities and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

In this world people have to pay an extortionate price for any exceptional gift whatever.

Art it seems to me should simplify.

No one can builu her security upon the nobleness of another person.

I am enjoying to a full that period of reflection which is the happiest conclusion to a life of action.

Where there is great love there are always wishes.

That is happiness: to be dissolved into something completely great.

The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.