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Willa Cather

Willa Cather Quotes

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Famous Willa Cather Quotes

“Every artist knows that there is no such thing as "freedom" in art. The first thing an artist does when he begins a new work is to lay down the barriers and limitations; he decides upon a certain composition, a certain key, a certain relation of creatures or objects to each other. He is never free, and the more splendid his imagination, the more intense his feeling, the farther he goes from general truth and general emotion.”

KnowsFirstsDoeArtFeelingsArtistCertainImaginationEmotionObjectsKeysCreaturesRelationLaysIntenseLimitationBarriersCompositionSplendidNew WorkDecide Upon
Book:Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art
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“Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all - no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself - a game of make-believe, or re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it.”

PeopleBelieveArtMatterEyeGamesArt IsEarsExcitingNo Matter WhatProductionsPsychologicalConcreteDelightfulMake BelieveSociologicalChildish Things
Book:Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art
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“Many people seem to think that art is a luxury to be imported and tacked on to life. Art springs out of the very stuff that life is made of. Most of our young authors start to write a story and make a few observations from nature to add local color. The results are invariably false and hollow. Art must spring out of the fullness and richness of life.”

PeopleThinkingWritingArtMadeStoriesSeemsYoungLife IsStuffResultsColorSpringArt IsAddLocalsObservationLuxuryHollowFullnessRichnessRichness Of Life
Book:Willa Cather in person: interviews, speeches, and letters
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“[Some] people really expect the passion of love to fill and gratify every need of life, whereas nature only intended that it should meet one of many demands. They insist on making it stand for all the emotional pleasures of life and art; expecting an individual and self-limited passion to yield infinite variety, pleasure, and distraction, and to contribute to their lives what the arts and the pleasurable exercise of the intellect gives to less limited and less intense idealists.”

PeopleNeedsGivingShouldArtSelfPassionIndividualPleasureEmotionalExerciseDemandInfiniteIntellectIntenseVarietyYieldDistractionExpectingIdealistPleasures Of LifeLove Passion
Book:The Essential Willa Cather Collection
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“Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand - a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods - or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.”

ShouldWritingArtStoriesValuesOughtSafeDemandCraftsSomething NewBreakfastSoapFast FoodIntrinsic ValueCommendableBreakfast Food
Book:Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art
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“Art, it seems to me, should simplify finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole - so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader's consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page.”

IfsShouldArtWholeSeemsFormSpiritCan DoConsciousnessCuttingTypeReaderFindingsPagesDetailsPreservesEditorsConventionsEditingSimplify
Book:Willa Cather On Writing
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