Willa Cather

Born 7 December 1873 · Died 24 April 1947

From Gore, Virginia, United States · Nationality: United States · Writes fiction

Willa Siebert Cather was an American author who grew up in Nebraska. She is best known for her depictions of frontier life on the Great Plains in novels such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark.

Quotes

“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.”
O Pioneers!, Part V
“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.”
My Antonia, Book I
“What was any art but an effort to make a sheath, 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?”
The Song of the Lark, Part IV
“I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.”
O Pioneers!, Part II
“Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.”
My Antonia, Book V