Willa Cather World Quotations

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.

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

Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky.

Ugly accidents happen . . . always have and always will. But the failures are swept back into the pile and forgotten. They don`t leave any lasting scar in the world, and they don`t affect the future. The things that last are the good things. The people who forge ahead and do something, they really count.

One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere, and hold fast to the days...

Every artist makes herself born. You must bring the artist into the world yourself.

If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry

Love itself draws on a woman nearly all the bad luck in the world

Your vivid, exciting companionship in the office must not be your audience, you must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.

People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find.

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

In great misfortunes, people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love--if once one has ever fallen in.

The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.