Willa Cather Quotes

Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.

My own thoughts Are my companions.

Most of the songs are, in a roundabout way, actually addressed to myself, there's a certain aspect of the songs that's very confessional, very unadulterated...It was a very unfettered, spiritual experience.

I write in order to make the little voices in my head go away. Thus far it hasn't worked.

I grow silent. Dear soul, you speak.

Letter-writing too often degenerates into a communicating of facts, and not of truths; of other men's deeds and not our thoughts.What are the convulsions of a planet, compared with the emotions of the soul? or the rising of a thousand suns, if that is not enlightened by a ray?

I daydream a lot - that's how I get my ideas. If I'm sitting in a café, I'm not on my phone because I want to hear my mind. I think that those periods of small solitude that we are really losing are so important.

We two are to ourselves a crowd.

The ultimate and dearest - and, again, only - relationship we have is the relationship we have with our thoughts.

your soul is an inner something that is another you and hardly anybody knows what it's really thinkin' except you.

Our character is composed of our ideas and our feelings: and, since it has been proved that we give ourselves neither feelings nor ideas, our character does not depend on us. If it did depend on us, there is nobody who would not be perfect. If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; but when one does reflect, one realizes that one is master of nothing

How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts--I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if astranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious--insolent & whimsical I must appear!--one moment flighty and half mad,--the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole recommendations.

If I'm feeling that I have an angle or something to say or something where in a way I'm having a conversation with myself, that's immensely pleasurable.

I stood among them, but not of them: in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts.

I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it!

At this young age I am already sold on the idea of the dog. One of God's absolutely greatest inventions and one that needs no more tinkering. The dog is the perfect beast, companion, friend, shoulder to lean on, and scapegoat when too many cookies are missing. And a dog won't hold that against you, either. I am at peace sitting in silence with a dog.

When I want to go to sleep, I must first get a whole menagerie of voices to shut up. You wouldn't believe what a racket they make in my room.

When you live with voices in your head, you are drawn inextricably to voices outside your head. Very often the voices work to confirm your worst suspicions. Or think of things you could never have imagined! There are only so many hours of the day to hate yourself.

Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.

She was not often invited to join in the conversation of the others, nor did she desire it. Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.

The mind will quote whether the tongue does or not.

When I’m alone in my room sometimes I stare at the wall, and in the back of my mind I hear my conscience call.

It seems to me that there are certain thoughts and vignettes and attitudes that I have always had the desire to represent.

Waves of thought are stirring. In a twilight corner of her consciousness, one tiny fragment and another tiny fragment call out wordlessly to eachother, their spreading ripples intermingling.

In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.