Willa Cather Quotes

If there's a fire, I want to be there. Maybe because in being so close to death, I think I understand what it means to be truly alive.

I can imagine myself on my death-bed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a woman.

The impartial earth opens alike for the child of the pauper and the king.

We will cry and bleed and lust and love, and we will cure death. We will be the cure. Because we want it.

Until I lose my soul and lie Blind to the beauty of the earth, Deaf though shouting wind goes by, Dumb in a storm of mirth; Until my heart is quenched at length And I have left the land of men, Oh, let me love with all my strength Careless if I am loved again.

Death is a great price to pay for a red rose“, cried the Nightingale, "and Life is very dear to all. “ It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent oft he hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and the heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?

Before birth; yes, what time was it then? A time like now, and when they were dead, it would be still like now: these trees, that sky, this earth, those acorn seeds, sun and wind, all the same, while they, with dust-turned hearts, change only.

Love has earth to which she clings.

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow claspest the limits of mortality.

I know that it's comin I just hope that I'm alive for it

The eyes of this dead lady speak to me For here was love, was not to be drowned out. And here desire, not to be kissed away. The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.

There was earth inside them, and they dug.

One must desire something to be alive; perhaps absolute satisfaction is only another name for Death.

Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death.

Earth has waited for them, All the time of their growth Fretting for their decay: Now she has them at last.

Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - "God damn it, you've got to be kind."

And these things that keep alive on departure know that you praise them; transient, they look to us, the most transient, to be their rescue. They want us to change them completely, in our invisible hearts, into -- O endlessly -- us! Whoever, finally, we may be.

Death is very likely the single best invention of life.

Those who die, merely suffering the woes of life like cats and dogs, are they men?

The eighteen years he has lived seem but a moment, a breathing space in the long march of humanity. Already he hears death calling. With all his heart he wants to come close to some other human, touch someone with his hands, be touched by the hand of another.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.

I didn't know what my fate was as far as being alive.