Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Willa Cather Novelist

  • Gender: Female
  • Citizenship: United States
  • Born: Dec 7, 1873
  • Died: Apr 24, 1947

Willa Sibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a novel set during World War I.

Cather grew up in Virginia and Nebraska, and graduated from the University of Nebraska. She lived and worked in Pittsburgh for ten years. At the age of 33 she moved to New York City, her primary home for the rest of her life, though she also traveled widely and spent considerable time at her summer residence in New Brunswick, Canada.

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

aging

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

best

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

family

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

death

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

nature

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

happiness

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

greatness

Where there is great love, there are always wishes.

greatness, love & Valentine's Day

It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of.

greatness