Willa Cather Quotes

When I was younger - it might be a romantic idea - I always thought I might go crazy.

I loved the idea of Travolta sitting on the kid's swing, pining away for his girlfriend.

'American Graffiti' stayed in my mind, but I don't think to this day I've done a film that captured that same level of melancholy. It was so well done. Talking about it has given me the idea I might try harder to make that melancholy film!

I'm 78. We've lost a lot of our great stars. I can't hang out with those who aren't here. The phone service to Heaven is so bad, you know. But I get to visit with their memories.

I always make a distinction between nostalgia and sentimentality. Nostalgia is genuine - you mourn things that actually happened.

Memory is satisfied desire.

But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning. And I remember everything that happened that day becasue it has happened many times in my life. The same innocence, trust, and restlessness; the wonder, fear, and lonliness. How I lost myself. I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so long ago. I wished to be found.

Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke.

Remembering the ball became for Emma a daily occupation. Every time Wednesday came round, she told herself when she woke up: 'Ah! One week ago...two weeks ago...three weeks ago, I was there!' And, little by little, in her memory, the faces all blurred together; she forgot the tunes of the quadrilles; no longer could she so clearly picture the liveries and the rooms; some details disappeared, but the yearning remained.

I found myself in the changed man theory the other night thinking, "Yeah." I thought, "My god. If we could do this again," but there was nothing specific there. There's just the kind of vague sensation of how I'd like it to go. I allowed myself that gift to think that.

Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.

My memory loves you… it asks about you all the time.

Remembrance is to the heart what water is to the fish. And what is the state of a fish that leaves water?

I dwell with a strangely aching heart In that vanished abode there far apart

The dreams of childhood - it's airy fables, its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond; so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown.

You can tell it any way you want but that's the way it is. I should of done it and I didnt. And some part of me has never quit wishin I could go back. And I cant. I didn't know you could steal your own life. And I didnt know that it would bring you no more benefit than about anything else you might steal. I thinkI done the best with itI knew how but itstill wasntmine. It neverhas been.

Old stories are like old friends, she used to say. You have to visit them from time to time.

So I find every pleasant spot In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber, and the street, For all is dark where thou art not

The test of enjoyment is the remembrance which it leaves behind.

If I were poet now, I would not resist the temptation to trace my life back through the delicate shadows of my childhood to the precious and sheltered sources of my earliest memories. But these possessions are far too dear and sacred for the person I now am to spoil for myself. All there is to say of my childhood is that it was good and happy. I was given the freedom to discover my own inclinations and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength.

It's better to have a pocket full of regrets than to never have lived.

I missed you even when I was with you. That’s been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought.

If you're lucky enough to fall in love, that's one thing. Otherwise all that was ever truly beautiful to me was boyhood. It's the meal we sup on for the rest of our lives. Love puts the icing on life. But if you don't find it...you must call on your childhood memories over and over till you do.

You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.