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Men Are All Right For Friends, But As Soon As You Marry Them They Turn Into Cranky Old Fathers, Even The Wild Ones. They Begin To Tell You What's Sensible And What's Foolish, And Want You To Stick At Home All The Time. I Prefer To Be Foolish When I Feel Like It, And Be Accountable To Nobody.

-Willa Cather

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Men Are All Right

Willa Cather

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Men Are All Right For Friends, But As Soon As You Marry Them They Turn Into Cranky Old Fathers, Even The Wild Ones. They Begin To Tell You What's Sensible And What's Foolish, And Want You To Stick At Home All The Time. I Prefer To Be Foolish When I Feel Like It, And Be Accountable To Nobody.

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There Seemed To Be Nothing To See; No Fences, No Creeks Or Trees, No Hills Or Fields. If There Was A Road, I Could Not Make It Out In The Faint Starlight. There Was Nothing But Land: Not A Country At All, But The Material Out Of Which Countries Are Made.

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.

People Always Think The Bread Of Another Country Is Better Than Their Own.

There Was A New Kind Of Strength In The Gravity Of Her Face, And Her Colors Still Gave Her That Look Of Deep-seated Health And Ardor.

I Wanted To Walk Straight On Through The Red Grass And Over The Edge Of The World, Which Could Not Be Very Far Away. The Light And Air Abot Me Told Me That The World Ended Here: Only The Ground And Sun And Sky Were Left, And If One Went A Little Farther There Would Only Be Sun And Sky, And One Would Float Off Into Them, Like The Tawny Hawks Which Sailed Over Our Heads Making Slow Shadows On The Grass.

The "sayings" Of A Community, Its Proverbs, Are Its Characteristic Comment Upon Life; They Imply Its History, Suggest Its Attitude Toward The World And Its Way Of Accepting Life. Such An Idiom Makes The Finest Language Any Writer Can Have; And He Can Never Get It With A Notebook. He Himself Must Be Able To Think And Feel In That Speech - It Is A Gift From Heart To Heart.

[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.

I've Seen It Before. There Are Women Who Spread Ruin Through No Fault Of Theirs, Just By Being Too Beautiful, Too Ful Of Life And Love. They Can't Help It. Poeple Come To Them As People Go To A Warm Fire In Winter.

There Was Only - Spring Itself, The Throb Of It, The Light Restlessness, The Vital Essence Of It Everywhere; In The Sky, In The Swift Clouds, In The Pale Sunshine, And In The Warm High Wind - Rising Suddenly, Sinking Suddenly, Impulsive ... If I Had Been Tossed Down Blindfold On That Red Prairie, I Should Have Known That It Was Spring.

The Great Fact Was The Land Itself, Which Seemed To Overwhelm The Little Beginnings Of Human Society That Struggled In Its Sombre Wastes.

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.

Let Your Fiction Grow Out Of The Land Beneath Your Feet.

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.

Let People Go On Talking As They Like, And We Will Go On Living As We Think Best.

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

Today I Stood Taller From Walking Among The Trees.

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.

Falling In Love

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.

The Stupid Believe That To Be Truthful Is Easy; Only The Artist, The Great Artist, Knows How Difficult It Is.

Oh, The Germans Classify, But The French Arrange.

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.

What Was Any Art But A Mould In Which To Imprison For A Moment The Shining Elusive Element Which Is Life Itself - Life Hurrying Past Us And Running Away, Too Strong To Stop, Too Sweet To Lose.

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

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!)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The World Is Always Full Of Brilliant Youth Which Fades Into Grey And Embittered Middle Age: The First Flowering Takes Everything. The Great Men Are Those Who Have Developed Slowly, Or Who Have Been Able To Survive The Glamour Of Their Early Florescence And To Go On Learning From Life.

The Soul Cannot Be Humbled By Fasts And Prayer; It Must Be Broken By Mortal Sin To Experience Forgiveness Of Sin And Rise To A State Of Grace. Otherwise, Religion Is Nothing But Dead Logic.

Every Individual Taste, Every Natural Appetite, Was Bridled By Caution. The People Asleep In Those Houses, I Thought, Tried To Live Like The Mice In Their Own Kitchens; To Make No Noise, To Leave No Trace, To Slip Over The Surface Of Things In The Dark.

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

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.

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

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.

Art, It Seems To Me, Should Simplify Finding What Conventions Of Form And What Detail One Can Do Without And Yet Preserve The Spirit Of The Whole - So That All That One Has Suppressed And Cut Away Is There To The Reader's Consciousness As Much As If It Were In Type On The Page.

Most Of The Basic Material A Writer Works With Is Acquired Before The Age Of Fifteen.

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.

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.

A Burnt Dog Dreads The Fire.

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.

Only The Stupid And The Phlegmatic Should Teach.

Whatever Is Felt Upon The Page Without Being Specifically Named There — That, One Might Say, Is Created.

Men Travel Faster Now, But I Do Not Know If They Go To Better Things.

[mark Twain] Is Still The Rough, Awkward, Good-natured Boy Who Swore At The Deck Hands When He Was Three Years Old. Thoroughly Likeable As A Good Fellow, But Impossible As A Man Of Letters.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The Summer Moon Hung Full In The Sky. For The Time Being It Was The Great Fact Of The World.

Every Artist Makes Herself Born. You Must Bring The Artist Into The World Yourself.

Most Publishers, Like Most Writers, Are Ruined By Their Successes.

Success Is Less Interesting Than Struggle. There Is Great Pleasure In The Effort.

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.

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.

The World Is Little, People Are Little, Human Life Is Little. There Is Only One Big Thing — Desire.

The Air Was Cool Enough To Make The Warm Sun Pleasant On One's Back And Shoulders, And So Clear That The Eye Could Follow A Hawk Up And Up, Into The Blazing Blue Depths Of The Sky.

New Things Are Always Ugly.

The Higher Processes Are All Processes Of Simplification. The Novelist Must Learn To Write, And Then He Must Unlearn It; Just As The Modern Painter Learns To Draw, And Then Learns When Utterly To Disregard His Accomplishment, When To Subordinate It To A Higher And Truer Effect.

The Fact That I Was A Girl Never Damaged My Ambitions To Be A Pope Or An Emperor.

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.

I Tell You There Is Such A Thing As Creative Hate.

Wherever Humanity Has Made That Hardest Of All Starts And Lifted Itself Out Of Mere Brutality Is A Sacred Spot.

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

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

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.

The Test Of One's Decency Is How Much Of A Fight One Can Put Up After One Has Stopped Caring, And After One Has Found Out That One Can Never Please The People They Wanted To Please.

[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.

The Dead Might As Well Try To Speak To The Living As The Old To The Young.

In Other Searchings It Might Be The Object Of The Quest That Brought Satisfaction, Or It Might Be Something Incidental That One Got On The Way; But In Religion, Desire Was Fulfilment, It Was The Seeking Itself That Rewarded.

The Prayers Of All Good People Are Good.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

In This World People Have To Pay An Extortionate Price For Any Exceptional Gift Whatever.

When Kindness Has Left People, Even For A Few Moments, We Become Afraid Of Them As If Their Reason Had Left Them. When It Has Left A Place Where We Have Always Found It, It Is Like Shipwreck; We Drop From Security Into Something Malevolent And Bottomless.

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.

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.

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.

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

Art, It Seems To Me, Should Simplify.

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

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.

It Is Scarcely Exaggeration To Say That If One Is Not A Little Mad About Balzac At Twenty, One Will Never Live; And If At Forty One Can Still Take Rastignac And Lucien De Rubempre At Balzac's Own Estimate, One Has Lived In Vain.

Men Are All Right For Friends, But As Soon As You Marry Them They Turn Into Cranky Old Fathers, Even The Wild Ones.

Sometimes A Neighbor Whom We Have Disliked A Lifetime For His Arrogance And Conceit Lets Fall A Single Commonplace Remark That Shows Us Another Side, Another Man, Really; A Man Uncertain, And Puzzled, And In The Dark Like Ourselves.

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

Too Much Information Is Rather Deadening.

Too Much Information

Hunger Is A Powerful Incentive To Introspection.

There Was Nothing But Land; Not A Country At All, But The Material Out Of Which Countries Are Made.

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

Religion Is Different From Everything Else; Because In Religion Seeking Is Finding.

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

Money Is A Protection, A Cloak; It Can Buy One Quiet, And Some Sort Of Dignity.

It Is Easy To Pity When Once One's Vanity Has Been Tickled.

No Nation Has Ever Produced Great Art That Has Not Made A High Art Of Cookery, Because Art Appeals Primarily To The Senses.

He Had Been To See Mrs. Erlich Just Before Starting Home For The Holidays, And Found Her Making German Christmas Cakes. She Took Him Into The Kitchen And Explained The Almost Holy Traditions That Governed This Complicated Cookery. Her Excitement And Seriousness As She Beat And Stirred Were Very Pretty, Claude Thought. She Told Off On Her Fingers The Many Ingredients, But He Believed There Were Things She Did Not Name: The Fragrance Of Old Friendships, The Glow Of Early Memories, Belief In Wonder-working Rhymes And Songs.

Alexandra Sighed. "i Have A Feeling That If You Go Away, You Will Not Come Back. Something Will Happen To One Of Us, Or To Both. People Have To Snatch At Happiness When They Can, In This World. It Is Always Easier To Lose Than To Find. What I Have Is Yours If You Care Enough About Me To Take It.

I Ain't Got Time To Learn. I Can Work Like Mans Now.

It Does Not Matter Much Whom We Live With In This World, But It Matters A Great Deal Whom We Dream Of.

It Takes A Great Deal Of Experience To Become Natural.

The Sincerity Of Feeling That Is Possible Between A Writer And A Reader Is One Of The Finest Things I Know.

Paris Is A Hard Place To Leave, Even When It Rains Incessantly And One Coughs Continually From The Dampness.

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

Now That Stevenson Is Dead I Can Think Of But One English- Speaking Author Who Is Really Keeping His Self-respect And Sticking Forperfection. Of Course I Refer To That Mighty Master Of Language And Keen Student Of Human Actions And Motives, Henry James.

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

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

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

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

This Is Reality, Whether You Like It Or Not--all Those Frivolities Of Summer, The Light And Shadow, The Living Mask Of Green That Trembled Over Everything, They Were Lies, And This Is What Was Underneath. This Is The Truth.

One January Day, Thirty Years Ago, The Little Town Of Hanover, Anchored On A Windy Nebraska Tableland, Was Trying Not To Be Blown Away.

The Heart, When It Is Too Much Alive, Aches For That Brown Earth, And Ecstasy Has No Fear Of Death.

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

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.

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.

Personal Life Becomes Paler As The Imaginative Life Becomes Richer.

Art And Religion (they Are The Same Thing, In The End, Of Course) Have Given Man The Only Happiness He Has Ever Had.

I Kept As Still As I Could. Nothing Happened. I Did Not Expect Anything To Happen. I Was Something That Lay Under The Sun And Felt It, Like The Pumpkins, And I Did Not Want To Be Anything More. I Was Entirely Happy. Perhaps We Feel Like That When We Die And Become A Part Of Something Entire, Whether It Is Sun And Air, Or Goodness And Knowledge. At Any Rate, That Is Happiness; To Be Dissolved Into Something Complete And Great. When It Comes To One, It Comes As Naturally As Sleep.

Only Solitary Men Know The Full Joys Of Frienship. Others Have Their Family; But To A Solitary And An Exile, His Friends Are Everything.

No One Can Build His Security Upon The Nobleness Of Another Person. Two People, When They Love Each Other, Grow Alike In Their Tastes And Habits And Pride, But Their Moral Natures (whatever We May Mean By That Canting Expression) Are Never Welded. The Base One Goes On Being Base, And The Noble One Noble, To The End.

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.

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.

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

Give The People A New Word And They Think They Have A New Fact.

Imagination, 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 — A Sensitiveness To Which Outside Things Appeal. It Is A Composition Of Sympathy And Observation.

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.

Love Itself Draws On A Woman Nearly All The Bad Luck In The World

Desire Is Creation, Is The Magical Element In That Process. If There Were An Instrument By Which To Measure Desire, One Could Foretell Achievement.

There Is A Popular Superstition That "realism" Asserts Itself In The Cataloguing Of A Great Number Of Material Objects, In Explaining Mechanical Processes, The Methods Of Operating Manufactories And Trades, And In Minutely And Unsparingly Describing Physical Sensations. But Is Not Realism, More Than It Is Anything Else, An Attitude Of Mind On The Part Of The Writer Toward His Material, A Vague Indication Of The Sympathy And Candour With Which He Accepts, Rather Than Chooses, His Theme?

She Had Certain Thoughts Which Were Like Companions, Ideas Which Were Like Older And Wiser Friends.

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

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

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

People Can Be Lovers And Enemies At The Same Time, You Know.

The Condition Every Art Requires Is, Not So Much Freedom From Restriction, As Freedom From Adulteration And From The Intrusion Of Foreign Matter.

It Has Long Been A Tradition Among Novel Writers That A Book Must End By Everybody Getting Just What They Wanted, Or If The Conventional Happy Ending Was Impossible, Then It Must Be A Tragedy In Which One Or Both Should Die. In Real Life Very Few Of Us Get What We Want, Our Tragedies Don't Kill Us, But We Go On Living Them Year After Year, Carrying Them With Us Like A Scar On An Old Wound.

The Qualities Of A Second-rate Writer Can Easily Be Defined, But A First-rate Writer Can Only Be Experienced. It Is Just The Thing In Him Which Escapes Analysis That Makes Him First-rate.

Yes, And Because We Grow Old We Become More And More The Stuff Our Forbears Put Into Us. I Can Feel His Savagery Strengthen In Me. We Think We Are So Individual And So Misunderstood When We Are Young; But The Nature Our Strain Of Blood Carries Is Inside There, Waiting, Like Our Skeleton.

The Irregular And Intimate Quality Of Things Made Entirely By The Human Hand.

A Work-room Should Be Like An Old Shoe; No Matter How Shabby, It's Better Than A New One.

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.

Happy People Do A Great Deal For Their Friends.

Men Are All Right For Friends, But As Soon As You Marry Them They Turn Into Cranky Old Fathers, Even The Wild Ones. They Begin To Tell You What's Sensible And What's Foolish, And Want You To Stick At Home All The Time. I Prefer To Be Foolish When I Feel Like It, And Be Accountable To Nobody.

If You Don't Keep And Guard And Mature Your Force, And Above All, Have Time And Quiet To Perfect Your Work, You Will Be Writing Things Not Much Better Than You Did Five Years Ago.

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.

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

The Trees And Shrubbery Seemed Well-groomed And Social, Like Pleasant People.

Too Much Detail Is Apt, Like Any Other Form Of Extravagance, To Become Slightly Vulgar.

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

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

The Trouble Is You Almost Have To Marry A Man Before You Can Find Out The Sort Of Wife He Needs; And Usually It's Exactly The Sort You Are Not.

One Afternoon Late In October Of The Year 1697, Euclide Auclair, The Philosopher Apothecary Of Quebec, Stood On The Top Of Cap Diamant Gazing Down The Broad, Empty River Far Beneath Him.

It Is A Tragic Hour, That Hour When We Are Finally Driven To Reckon With Ourselves, When Every Avenue Of Mental Distraction Has Been Cut Off And Our Own Life And All Its Ineffaceable Failures Closes About Us Like The Walls Of That Old Torture Chamber Of The Inquisition.

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

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.

Even The Wicked Get Worse Than They Deserve.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Late One Brilliant April Afternoon Professor Lucius Wilson Stood At The Head Of Chestnut Street, Looking About Him With The Pleased Air Of A Man Of Taste Who Does Not Very Often Get To Boston.

What If - What If Life Itself Were The Sweetheart?

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.

I Shall Not Die Of A Cold. I Shall Die Of Having Lived.

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

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

Look At My Papa Here; He's Been Dead All These Years, And Yet He Is More Real To Me Than Almost Anybody Else. He Never Goes Out Of My Life. I Talk To Him And Consult Him All The Time. The Older I Grow, The Better I Know Him And The More I Understand Him.

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 End Is Nothing; The Road Is All.

Sometimes Falling In Love May Look Like Pure Madness To Those Not Experiencing It But That's Only Because They're Not Involved. Just Because Other People Don't Understand Your Feelings Doesn't Mean They're Not Real Or They're Not Important. You Have To Trust Yourself. Feel What You Feel And Don't Worry About Anyone Else. Love Is About You And Your Significant Other, Remember That.

Falling In Love

Life Was So Short That It Meant Nothing At All Unless It Were Continually Reinforced By Something That Endured; Unless The Shadows Of Individual Existence Came And Went Against A Background That Held Together.

In A Few Hours One Could Cover That Incalculable Distance; From The Winter Country And Homely Neighbours, To The City Where The Air Trembled Like A Tuning-fork With Unimaginable Possibilities.

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

In 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.

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

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.

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

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

I Had Killed A Big Snake. I Was Now A Big Fellow.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Setting ... Is Accident. Either A Building Is Part Of A Place, Or It Is Not. Once That Kinship Is There, Time Will Only Make It Stronger.

Prayers Said By Good People Are Always Good Prayers

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William Lyon Mackenzie King

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