A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.
Willa CatherImagination, which is a quality writers must have, does not mean the ability to weave pretty stories out of nothing. In the right sense, imagination is a response to what is going on โ a sensitiveness to which outside things appeal. It is a composition of sympathy and observation.
Willa CatherThe pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify - it was like the light of truth itself.
Willa CatherPeople live through such pain only once. Pain comes againโbut it finds a tougher surface.
Willa CatherIn New Mexico, he always awoke a young man, not until he arose and began to shave did he realize that he was growing older. His first consciousness was a sense of the light dry wind blowing in through the windows, with the fragrance of hot sun and sage-brush and sweet clover; a wind that made one's body feel light and one's heart cry 'To-day, to-day,' like a child's.
Willa Cather