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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.

-Willa Cather

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One Realizes That Human

Willa Cather

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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.

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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.

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

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

When Kindness Has Left People, Even For A Few Moments, We Become Afraid Of Them, As If Their Reason Had Left Them.

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

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

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.

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.

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Exaggeration Is

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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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.

Too Much Information Is Rather Deadening.

Too Much Information

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.

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.

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

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.

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

[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.

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.

[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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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

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

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Falling In Love

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.

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

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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.

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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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Youth, When It Is Hurt, Likes To Feel Itself Betrayed.

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

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

Personal Life Becomes Paler As The Imaginative Life Becomes Richer.

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.

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

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

New Things Are Always Ugly.

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

What If - What If Life Itself Were The Sweetheart?

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

[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.

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.

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

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

A Burnt Dog Dreads The Fire.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Life Began For Me, When I Ceased To Admire And Began To Remember.

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

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

Every Artist Makes Himself Born. It Is Very Much Harder Than The Other Time, And Longer.

Art, It Seems To Me, Should Simplify.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The Prayers Of All Good People Are Good.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

Every Fine Story Must Leave In The Mind Of The Sensitive Reader An Intangible Residuum Of Pleasure, A Cadence, A Quality Of Voice That Is Exclusively The Writer's Own, Individual, Unique.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Where There Is Great Love There Are Always Miracles.

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

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

No One Can Build His Security Upon The Nobleness Of Another Person.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Some People's Lives Are Affected By What Happens To Their Person Or Their Property; But For Others Fate Is What Happens To Their Feelings And Their Thoughts -- That And Nothing More.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

I Like Trees Because They Seem More Resigned To The Way They Have To Live Than Other Things Do.

Only The Stupid And The Phlegmatic Should Teach.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Of All The Bewildering Things About A New Country, The Absence Of Human Landmarks Is One Of The Most Depressing And Disheartening.

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

Art Is A Concrete And Personal And Rather Childish Thing After All - No Matter What People Do To Graft It Into Science And Make It Sociological And Psychological; It Is No Good At All Unless It Is Let Alone To Be Itself - A Game Of Make-believe, Or Re-production, Very Exciting And Delightful To People Who Have An Ear For It Or An Eye For It.

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

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.

The Only Thing Very Noticeable About Nebraska Was That It Was Still, All Day Long, Nebraska.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

A Child's Attitude Toward Everything Is An Artist's Attitude.

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.

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.

The Revolt Against Individualism Naturally Calls Artists Severely To Account, Because The Artist Is Of All Men The Most Individual; Those Who Were Not Have Been Long Forgotten.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Success Is Never So Interesting As Struggle

On The Farm The Weather Was The Great Fact, And Men's Affairs Went On Underneath It, As The Streams Creep Under The Ice.

The Land Belongs To The Future.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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Shirley Jackson

Kenneth Grahame

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