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He Domesticated And Developed The Native Wild Flowers. He Had One Hill-side Solidly Clad With That Low-growing Purple Verbena Which Mats Over The Hills Of New Mexico. It Was Like A Great Violet Velvet Mantle Thrown Down In The Sun; All The Shades That The Dyers And Weavers Of Italy And France Strove For Through Centuries, The Violet That Is Full Of Rose Colour And Is Yet Not Lavender; The Blue That Becomes Almost Pink And Then Retreats Again Into Sea-dark Purple—the True Episcopal Colour And Countless Variations Of It.

-Willa Cather

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He Domesticated And Developed

Willa Cather

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He Domesticated And Developed The Native Wild Flowers. He Had One Hill-side Solidly Clad With That Low-growing Purple Verbena Which Mats Over The Hills Of New Mexico. It Was Like A Great Violet Velvet Mantle Thrown Down In The Sun; All The Shades That The Dyers And Weavers Of Italy And France Strove For Through Centuries, The Violet That Is Full Of Rose Colour And Is Yet Not Lavender; The Blue That Becomes Almost Pink And Then Retreats Again Into Sea-dark Purple—the True Episcopal Colour And Countless Variations Of It.

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When We Look Back, The Only Things We Cherish Are Those Which In Some Way Met Our Original Want; The Desire Which Formed In Us In Early Youth, Undirected, And Of Its Own Accord.

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Artistic Growth Is, More Than It Is Anything Else, A Refining Of The Sense Of Truthfulness.

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One May Have Staunch Friends In One's Own Family, But One Seldom Has Admirers.

For Ever And Anon The Soul Becomes Weary Of The Conventions That Are Not Of It, And With A Single Stroke Shatters The Civilized Lies With Which It Is Unable To Cope, And The Strong Arm Reaches Out And Takes By Force What It Cannot Win By Cunning.

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I Was Thinking, As I Watched Her, How Little It Mattered –about Her Teeth For Instance. I Know So Many Women Who Have Kept All The Things She Had Lost, *but Whose Inner Glow Has Faded*. Whatever Else Was Gone, Antonia Had Not Lost The Fire Of Life.

Sometimes," I Ventured, "it Doesn't Occur To Boys That Their Mother Was Ever Young And Pretty. . . I Couldn't Stand It If You Boys Were Inconsiderate, Or Thought Of Her As If She Were Just Somebody Who Looked After You. You See I Was Very Much In Love With Your Mother Once, And I Know There's Nobody Like Her.

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Yet The Summer Which Was To Change Everything Was Coming Nearer Every Day. When Boys And Girls Are Growing Up, Life Can't Stand Still, Not Even In The Quietest Of Country Towns; And They Have To Grow Up, Whether They Will Or No. That Is What Their Elders Are Always Forgetting.

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Elsewhere The Sky Is The Roof Of The World; But Here The Earth Was The Floor Of The Sky.

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Miracles Surround Us At Every Turn If We But Sharpen Our Perceptions Of Them.

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He Domesticated And Developed The Native Wild Flowers. He Had One Hill-side Solidly Clad With That Low-growing Purple Verbena Which Mats Over The Hills Of New Mexico. It Was Like A Great Violet Velvet Mantle Thrown Down In The Sun; All The Shades That The Dyers And Weavers Of Italy And France Strove For Through Centuries, The Violet That Is Full Of Rose Colour And Is Yet Not Lavender; The Blue That Becomes Almost Pink And Then Retreats Again Into Sea-dark Purple—the True Episcopal Colour And Countless Variations Of It.

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If We Never Arrived Anywhere, It Did Not Matter. Between That Earth And That Sky I Felt Erased, Blotted Out. I Did Not Say My Prayers That Night: Here, I Felt What Would Be Would Be.

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I Have Not Much Faith In Women In Fiction.... Women Are So Horribly Subjective And They Have Such Scorn For The Healthy Commonplace. When A Woman Writes A Story Of Adventure, A Stout Sea Tale, A Manly Battle Yarn, Anything Without Wine, Women, And Love, Then I Will Begin To Hope For Something Great From Them, Not Before.

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The Emptiness Was Intense, Like The Stillness In A Great Factory When The Machinery Stops Running.

"more Than Him Has Done That," Said Antonia Sadly, And The Girls Murmured Assent.

To Note An Artist's Limitations Is But To Define His Talent.

The History Of Every Country Begins In The Heart Of A Man Or A Woman.

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The Sky Was A Midnight-blue, Like Warm, Deep, Blue Water, And The Moon Seemed To Lie On It Like A Water-lily, Floating Forward With An Invisible Current.

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Dr. Howard Archie Had Just Come Up From A Game Of Pool With The Jewish Clothier And Two Traveling Men Who Happened To Be Staying Overnight In Moonstone.

The Sun Was Like A Great Visiting Presence That Stimulated And Took Its Due From All Animal Energy. When It Flung Wide Its Cloak And Stepped Down Over The Edge Of The Fields At Evening, It Left Behind It A Spent And Exhausted World.

They Ravaged Neither The Rivers Nor The Forest, And If They Irrigated, They Took As Little Water As Would Serve Their Needs. The Land And All That It Bore They Treated With Consideration; Not Attempting To Improve It, They Never Desecrated It.

We All Like People Who Do Things, Even If We Only See Their Faces On Cigar-box Lids.

Religion And Art Spring From The Same Root And Are Close Kin.

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Some Things Are Best Learned In Calm, Others In Storm.

Loyal? As Loyal As Anyone Who Plays Second Fiddle Ever Is.

Many People Seem To Think That Art Is A Luxury To Be Imported And Tacked On To Life. Art Springs Out Of The Very Stuff That Life Is Made Of. Most Of Our Young Authors Start To Write A Story And Make A Few Observations From Nature To Add Local Color. The Results Are Invariably False And Hollow. Art Must Spring Out Of The Fullness And Richness Of Life.

Sometimes I Wonder Why God Ever Trusts Talent In The Hands Of Women, They Usually Make Such An Infernal Mess Of It. I Think He Must Do It As A Sort Of Ghastly Joke.

Life Hurrying Past Us And Running Away, Too Strong To Stop, Too Sweet To Lose.

The Prayers Of All Good People Are Good.

Henry Colbert, The Miller, Always Breakfasted With His Wife--beyond That He Appeared Irregularly At The Family Table.

I Suppose There Were Moonless Nights And Dark Ones With But A Silver Shaving And Pale Stars In The Sky, But I Remember Them All As Flooded With The Rich Indolence Of A Full Moon.

People Live Through Such Pain Only Once. Pain Comes Again—but It Finds A Tougher Surface.

In Little Towns, Lives Roll Along So Close To One Another; Loves And Hates Beat About, Their Wings Almost Touching.

There Is Something Frank And Joyous And Young In The Open Face Of The Country. It Gives Itself Ungrudgingly To The Moods Of The Season, Holding Nothing Back.

I Have Sometimes Thought That His Bursts Of Imaginative Talk Were Fatal To His Poetic Gift. He Squandered Too Much In The Heat Of Personal Communication.

Old Men Are Like That, You Know. It Makes Them Feel Important To Think They Are In Love With Somebody.

Inspirational Love

If Youth Did Not Matter So Much To Itself, It Would Never Have The Heart To Go On.

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This Land Was An Enigma. It Was Like A Horse That No One Knows How To Break To Harness, That Runs Wild And Kicks Things To Pieces.

Now I Understood That The Same Road Was To Bring Us Together Again. Whatever We Had Missed, We Possessed Together The Precious, The Incommunicable Past.

Youth, Art, Love, Dreams, True-heartedness - Why Must They Go Out Of The Summer World Into Darkness?

Every American Travelling In England Gets His Own Individual Sport Out Of The Toy Passenger And Freight Trains And The Tiny Locomotives, With Their Faint, Indignant, Tiny Whistle. Especially In Western England One Wonders How The Business Of A Nation Can Possibly Be Carried On By Means So Insufficient.

Only A Woman, Divine, Could Know All That A Woman Can Suffer.

Old People, Who Have Felt Blows And Toil And Known The World's Hard Hand, Need, Even More Than Children Do, A Woman's Tenderness.

An Artist's Saddest Secrets Are Those That Have To Do With His Artistry.

Whatever Is Felt Upon The Page Without Being Specifically Named There - That, One Might Say, Is Created. It Is The Inexplicable Presence Of The Thing Not Named, Of The Overtone Divined By The Ear But Not Heard By It, The Verbal Mood, The Emotional Aura Of The Fact Or The Thing Or The Deed, That Gives High Quality To The Novel Or The Drama, As Well As To Poetry Itself.

Of Course Nebraska Is A Storehouse Of Literary Material. Everywhere Is A Storehouse Of Literary Material. If A True Artist Were Born In A Pigpen And Raised In A Sty, He Would Still Find Plenty Of Inspiration For His Work. The Only Need Is The Eye To See.

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.

There Are Only Two Or Three Human Stories, And They Go On Repeating Themselves As Fiercely As If They Had Never Happened Before.

There Are Some Things You Learn Best In Calm, And Some In Storm.

Winter Lies Too Long In Country Towns; Hangs On Until It Is Stale And Shabby, Old And Sullen.

[some] People Really Expect The Passion Of Love To Fill And Gratify Every Need Of Life, Whereas Nature Only Intended That It Should Meet One Of Many Demands. They Insist On Making It Stand For All The Emotional Pleasures Of Life And Art; Expecting An Individual And Self-limited Passion To Yield Infinite Variety, Pleasure, And Distraction, And To Contribute To Their Lives What The Arts And The Pleasurable Exercise Of The Intellect Gives To Less Limited And Less Intense Idealists.

Some Memories Are Realities, And Are Better Than Anything That Can Ever Happen To One Again.

I Wondered If The Life That Was Right For One Was Ever Right For Two!

Nothing Mattered ... But Writing Books, And Living The Kind Of Life That Made It Possible To Write Them.

The Pale, Cold Light Of The Winter Sunset Did Not Beautify - It Was Like The Light Of Truth Itself.

Prayers Said By Good People Are Always Good Prayers

The Voice Is A Wild Thing. It Can't Be Bred In Captivity.

The Two Friends Stood For A Few Moments On The Windy Street Corner, Not Speaking A Word, As Two Travelers, Who Have Lost Their Way, Sometimes Stand And Admit Their Perplexity In Silence. (o Pioneers!)

Pity Is Sworn Servant Unto Love: And This Be Sure, Wherever It Begin To Make The Way, It Lets Your Master In.

A Soup Like This Is Not The Work Of One Man. It Is The Result Of A Constantly Refined Tradition. There Are Nearly A Thousand Years Of History In This Soup.

[dawn] Is Always Such A Forgiving Time. When That First Cold, Bright Streak Comes Over The Water, It's As If All Our Sins Were Pardoned; As If The Sky Leaned Over The Earth And Kissed It And Gave It Absolution.

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.

One Summer Evening In The Year 1848, Three Cardinals And A Missionary Were Dining Together In The Gardens Of A Villa In The Sabine Hills, Overlooking Rome.

Hunger Is A Powerful Incentive To Introspection.

The Great Fact In Life, The Always Possible Escape From Dullness, Was The Lake. The Sun Rose Out Of It, The Day Began There; It Was Like An Open Door That Nobody Could Shut. The Land And All Its Dreariness Could Never Close In On You. You Had Only To Look At The Lake, And You Knew You Would Soon Be Free.

From The Time The Englishman's Bones Harden Into Bones At All, He Makes His Skeleton A Flagstaff, And He Early Plants His Feet Like One Who Is To Walk The World And The Decks Of All The Seas.

The Miracles Of The Church Seem To Me To Rest Not 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.

But She Still Had That Something Which Fires The Imagination, Could Still Stop One's Breath For A Moment By A Look Or Gesture That Somehow Revealed The Meaning In Common Things. She Had Only To Stand In The Orchard, To Put Her Hand On A Little Crab Tree And Look Up At The Apples, To Make You Feel The Goodness Of Planting And Tending And Harvesting At Last. All The Strong Things Of Her Heart Came Out In Her Body, That Had Been So Tireless In Serving Generous Emotions. It Was No Wonder That Her Sons Stood Tall And Straight. She Was A Rich Mine Of Life, Like The Founders Of Early Races.

Art, It Seems To Me, Should Simplify.

The Heart Of Another Is A Dark Forest, Always, No Matter How Close It Has Been To One's Own.

The Idea Of You Is A Part Of My Mind; You Influence My Likes And Dislikes, All My Tastes, Hundreds Of Times When I Don't Realize It. You Really Are A Part Of Me. In The Course Of Twenty Crowded Years One Parts With Many Illusions... I Did Not Wish To Lose The Early Ones. Some Memories Are Realities, And Are Better Than Anything That Can Ever Happen Again.

William Tavener Never Heeded Ominous Forecasts In The Domestic Horizon, And He Never Looked For A Storm Until It Broke.

Pittsburgh Was Even More Vital, More Creative, More Hungry For Culture Than New York. Pittsburgh Was The Birthplace Of My Writing.

Ah! The Terror And The Delight Of That Moment When First We Fear Ourselves! Until Then We Have Not Lived.

To Note An Artist's Limitations Is But To Define His Talent. A Reporter Can Write Equally Well About Everything That Is Presented To His View, But A Creative Writer Can Do His Best Only With What Lies Within The Range And Character Of His Deepest Sympathies.

Alcohol Is Perfectly Consistent In Its Effects Upon Man. Drunkenness Is Merely An Exaggeration. A Foolish Man Drunk Becomes Maudlin; A Bloody Man, Vicious; A Coarse Man, Vulgar.

Exaggeration Is

Merely Having Seen The Season Change In A Country Gave One The Sense Of Having Been There For A Long Time.

The Air And The Earth Interpenetrated In The Warm Gusts Of Spring; The Soil Was Full Of Sunlight, And The Sunlight Full Of Red Dust. The Air One Breathed Was Saturated With Earthy Smells, And The Grass Under Foot Had A Reflection Of The Blue Sky In It.

People Have To Snatch At Happiness When They Can, In This World. It Is Always Easier To Lose Than To Find.

A Man Long Accustomed To Admire His Wife In General, Seldom Pauses To Admire Her In A Particular Gown Or Attitude, Unless His Attention Is Directed To Her By The Appreciative Gaze Of Another Man.

Beautiful Women, Whose Beauty Meant More Than It Said... Was Their Brilliancy Always Fed By Something Coarse And Concealed? Was That Their Secret?

One Realizes That Human Relationships Are The Tragic Necessity Of Human Life; That They Can Never Be Wholly Satisfactory, That Every Ego Is Half The Time Greedily Seeking Them, And Half The Time Pulling Away From Them. In Those Simple Relationships Of Loving Husband And Wife, Affectionate Sisters, Children And Grandmother, There Are Innumerable Shades Of Sweetness And Anguish Which Make Up The Pattern Of Our Lives Day By Day, Though They Are Not Down In The List Of Subjects From Which The Conventional Novelist Works.

Nearly All The Escapists In The Long Past Have Managed Their Own Budget And Their Social Relations So Unsuccessfully That I Wouldn't Want Them For My Landlords, Or My Bankers, Or My Neighbors. They Were Valuable, Like Powerful Stimulants, Only When They Were Left Out Of The Social And Industrial Routine.

In Haverford On The Platte The Townspeople Still Talk Of Lucy Gayheart.

It Takes A Great Deal Of Experience To Become Natural.

Thirty Or Forty Years Ago, In One Those Grey Towns Along The Burlington Railroad Which Are So Much Greyer To-day Than They Were Then, There Was A House Well Know From Omaha To Denver For Its Hospitality And For A Certain Charm Of Atmosphere.

That Is Happiness; To Be Dissolved Into Something Complete And Great.

Too Much Information Is Rather Deadening.

Too Much Information

A Pioneer Should Have Imagination, Should Be Able To Enjoy The Idea Of Things More Than The Things Themselves.

All Southern Women Wished Of Their Menfolk Was Simply To Be 'like Paris Handsome And Like Hector Brave'.

Every Artist Knows That There Is No Such Thing As "freedom" In Art. The First Thing An Artist Does When He Begins A New Work Is To Lay Down The Barriers And Limitations; He Decides Upon A Certain Composition, A Certain Key, A Certain Relation Of Creatures Or Objects To Each Other. He Is Never Free, And The More Splendid His Imagination, The More Intense His Feeling, The Farther He Goes From General Truth And General Emotion.

When The Eyes Of The Flesh Are Shut, The Eyes Of The Spirit Are Open.

Thea Was Still Under The Belief That Public Opinion Could Be Placated; That If You Clucked Often Enough, The Hens Would Mistake You For One Of Themselves.

Freedom So Often Means That One Isn't Needed Anywhere. Here You Are An Individual, You Have A Background Of Your Own, You Would Be Missed. But Off There In The Cities There Are Thousands Of Rolling Stones Like Me. We Are All Alike; We Have No Ties, We Know Nobody, We Own Nothing.

It Is Cremated Youth. It Is All Yours--no One Gave It To You.

She Had Only To Stand In The Orchard, To Put Her Hand On A Little Crab Tree And Look Up At The Apples, To Make You Feel The Goodness Of Planting And Tending And Harvesting At Last.

Claude Wheeler Opened His Eyes Before The Sun Was Up And Vigorously Shook His Younger Brother, Who Lay In The Other Half Of The Same Bed.

How Terrible It Was To Love People When You Could Not Really Share Their Lives!

A Creative Writer Can Do His Best Only With What Lies Within The Range And Character Of His Deepest Sympathies.

Our Tree Became The Talking Tree Of The Fairy Tale; Legends And Stories Nestled Like Birds In Its Branches.

Human Relationships Are The Tragic Necessity Of Human Life; That They Can Never Be Wholly Satisfactory, That Every Ego Is Half The Time Greedily Seeking Them, And Half The Time Pulling Away From Them.

If The Street Life, Not The Whitechapel Street Life, But That Of The Common But So-called Respectable Part Of Town Is In Any City More Gloomy, More Ugly, More Grimy, More Cruel Than In London, I Certainly Don't Care To See It. Sometimes It Occurs To One That Possibly All The Failures Of This Generation, The World Over, Have Been Suddenly Swept Into London, For The Streets Are A Restless, Breathing, Malodorous Pageant Of The Seedy Of All Nations.

This Generation

Oh, That's The Beauty Of The Rose, That It Blossoms And Dies.

Oh, This Is The Joy Of The Rose; That It Blows, And Goes.

I Like Trees Because They Seem More Resigned To The Way They Have To Live Than Other Things Do. I Feel As If This Tree Knows Everything I Ever Think Of When I Sit Here. When I Come Back To It, I Never Have To Remind It Of Anything; I Begin Just Where I Left Off.

Personal Hatred And Family Affection Are Not Incompatible; They Often Flourish And Grow Strong Together.

We Come And Go, But The Land Is Always Here. And The People Who Love It And Understand It Are The People Who Own It - For A Little While.

From Two Ears That Had Grown Side By Side, The Grains Of One Shot Up Joyfully Into The Light, Projecting Themselves Into The Future, And The Grains From The Other Lay Still In The Earth And Rotted; And Nobody Knew Why.

So Long As A Novelist Works Selfishly For The Pleasure Of Creating Character And Situation Corresponding To His Own Illusions, Ideals And Intuitions, He Will Always Produce Something Worth While And Natural. Directly He Takes Himself Too Seriously And Begins For The Alleged Benefit Of Humanity An Elaborate Dissection Of Complexes, He Evolves A Book That Is More Ridiculous And Tiresome Than The Most Conventional Cold Cream Girl Novel Of Yesterday.

If There Were No Girls Like Them In The World, There Would Be No Poetry

Freedom So Often Means That One Isn't Needed Anywhere.

The End Is Nothing; The Road Is All.

The More Observing Ones May Have Seen, But Discerning People Are Usually Discreet And Often Kind, For We Usually Bleed A Little Before We Begin To Discern.

I Don't Want Anyone Reading My Writing To Think About Style. I Just Want Them To Be In The Story.

I First Met Myra Henshawe When I Was Fifteen, But I Had Known Her About Ever Since I Could Remember Anything At All.

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