Willa Cather Quotes

Writing is the starting point from which all goodness (and crappiness) flows.

Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.

A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.

The artist is called a creator.

Personally there is first: imagination; second: the act of writing - and third: the act/act of vocalizing.

There is this tendency to think that if you could only find the magic way, then you could become a poet. "Tell me how to become a poet. Tell me what to do." . . . What makes you a poet is a gift for language, an ability to see into the heart of things, and an ability to deal with important unconscious material. When all these things come together, you're a poet. But there isn't one little gimmick that makes you a poet. There isn't any formula for it.

A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.

I'm a bit like a sponge. When I'm not writing I absorb life like water. When I write I squeeze the sponge a little - and out comes, not water but ink.

The Muse gave the Greeks genius and the art of the well-turned phrase.

Creativity or talent, like electricity, is something I don’t understand but something I’m able to harness and use. While electricity remains a mystery, I know I can plug into it and light up a cathedral or a synagogue or an operating room and use it to help save a life. Or I can use it to electrocute someone. Like electricity, creativity makes no judgment. I can use it productively or destructively. The important thing is to use it. You can’t use up creativity. The more you use it, the more you have.

An artist's flair is sometimes worth a scientist's brains.

There are two parts to the creative endeavor: making something, then disseminating it.

The marvellous thing about writing, whether it be fiction or journalism, is that it is simultaneously the most intimate and the most anonymous of meetings between people. It is profoundly intimate in reaching into the psyche of another, at the same time as being devoid of social characteristics, cultural characteristics, economic characteristics.

Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.

but as God said, crossing his legs, I see where I have made plenty of poets but not so very much poetry.

I know for sure that I have an instinct for color, and that it will come to me more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones.

A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity he is continually informing and filling some other body.

People should be stopped from writing poetry. There's far too much of it. And if they're any good, they'll go ahead anyways.

I love the energy that comes when I get on the mic. It keeps me creative and I love to hear what the fans want, what they love or hate about it.

All men are creative but few are artists.

Normal people do not create art.

When I had spent a few days without thinking, without doing anything, I would feel a sudden urge to paint. Then I would set up my easel in full sunshine.

God makes many poets, but he only gives utterance to a few.

An artist is a person who has invented an artist.

If I get ideas independently of the act of writing, they never really fit. So for me, there's no hanging out, waiting for inspiration.