The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter.

To fulfil the dreams of one's youth; that is the best that can happen to a man. No worldly success can take the place of that.

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand - a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods - or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

When people ask me if it has been a hard or easy road, I always answer with the same quotation, the end is nothing, the road is all.Willa Cather

How terrible it was to love people when you could not really share their lives!

When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason had left them.

Pittsburgh was even more vital, more creative, more hungry for culture than New York. Pittsburgh was the birthplace of my writing.