Laura Ingalls Wilder Quotes

I grew up in wide-open spaces, but they didn't have the romantic history of the West.

But the West of the old times, with its strong characters, its stern battles and its tremendous stretches of loneliness, can never be blotted from my mind.

Anyone who's done their homework knows that the West was a pretty rough-and-tumble place. People from all over the world were there - and when you were there, you had to be tough as nails.

From the time I was a kid, I was crazy about anything having to do with the West. I'd look at all of these photos of Montana, and they all seemed so magical and majestic. I just wanted to go west, and I finally did it when I was barely 21. I went off to volunteer at a Navajo reservation in New Mexico.

I've lived in Kansas for more than thirty years, and for half of those, I was part of a ranching family, so I'm writing about things I know and love.

In the early West, law and politics were parallel roads to usefulness as well as distinction.

Oklahoma's my home. I love it there. I miss it.

The history of my state of Oklahoma offers a great example of pursuing the American Dream. It was built and settled by pioneers moving West to seek better lives.

It was my effort, in depicting the West, to depict it as it was.

When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.

My great-grandmother grew up in a sod house in Nebraska. When she was a tiny girl - in other words, only four human generations ago - there were still enough wild bison on the Plains that she was afraid lightning storms would spook them and they would trample her home.

Well, pioneers always suffer. I don't care who is the first to embark upon things. For instance, settlers that settled the West, Western Canada and the U.S... they went though hell doing it, but it had to be done.

Frontiersmen good and bad, gunmen as well as inspired prophets of the future, have been my camp companions. Thus, I know the country of which I am about to write as few men now living have known it.

It was because of my great interest in the West, and my belief that its development would be assisted by the interest I could awaken in others, that I decided to bring the West to the East through the medium of the Wild West Show.

Left the ranch in 1883, went to California, going through the States and territories, reached Ogden the latter part of 1883, and San Francisco in 1884.

There is extraordinary similarities between the Midwest in America and Europe in that there is this sense of vast, open sky and loneliness and cold.

In 'Hokey Pokey,' bikes are kind of more than bikes alone. They become mustangs; they become creatures that rip up the dust as they gallop across the Great Plains.

Casper Wyo., population 18,000 when I was born, was large enough to hold the surprises of civilization, but small enough that the prairie was close by - for some in our town, right out the front door - stretching on forever, under the great curving sky.

As a young girl, I saw commitment in my grandmother, who helped Grandpa homestead our farm on the Kansas prairie. Somehow they outlasted the Dust Bowl, the Depression, and the tornadoes that terrorize the Great Plains.

'West To A Land Of Plenty' shows a family heading west, first on board a train, and then going into areas as yet untamed by rail by way of an ox-drawn wagon.

When she was 16, my grandmother, Hannie Reed, drove a wagon in the Oklahoma land rush.

There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no settlers. Only Indians lived there.

You must recollect that our situation is different from that of other towns in the Eastern part of the State, which have always enjoyed the benefits of churches, schools & other civilizing influences. We have always been a frontier Town, where the wild & reckless sons of the Plains have congregated, their influences are still felt here, but we are rapidly overcoming them, let us alone & we will work out our own salvation in due season. I flatter myself that I know how to handle the boys, they cannot be driven. Please do not borrow trouble Governor about the conduct or management of Dodge City.

The plains are almost wholly uninhabitable by people depending upon agriculture.

While the government underwrote the West more than any other region, the myth claimed that hardworking Western cowboys and settlers wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone to work out their own destiny.