The test of one's decency is how much of a fight one can…

The end is nothing; the road is all.

— Willa Cather

Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.

— Willa Cather

Success is less interesting than struggle. There is great pleasure in the effort.

— Willa Cather

“I only knew the schoolbooks said he "died in the wilderness, of a broken heart." "More than him has done that," said Antonia sadly,…

— Willa Cather

“Have the last word ma'm," he said cheerfully. "It's a lady's privilege.”

— Willa Cather

"More than him has done that," said Antonia sadly, and the girls murmured assent.

— Willa Cather

Nothing mattered ... but writing books, and living the kind of life that made it possible to write them.

— Willa Cather

“Money and office and success are the consolations of impotence. Fortune turns kind to such solid people and lets them suck their bone in…

— Willa Cather

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…

— Willa Cather

“You remember how homesick I used to get, and what long talks we used to have coming from school? We've someway always felt alike…

— Willa Cather

“He placed this book in my grandmother's hands, looked at her entreatingly, and said, with an earnestness which I shall never forget, "Te-e-ach, te-e-ach…

— Willa Cather

The sincerity of feeling that is possible between a writer and a reader is one of the finest things I know.

— Willa Cather

One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half…

— Willa Cather

Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches.

— Willa Cather

“Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never…

— Willa Cather