Willa Cather Quotes

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper - whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

I swim in a sea of words. They flow around me and through me and, by a process that is not fully clear to me, some delicate hidden membrane draws forth the stuff that is the necessary condition of my life.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

Blank paper has always inspired me.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

I just sit down and the page just comes out and I look at it and the elements that appear on that page have a lot to do with what's going on in my life.

I always believed that whatever had to be written would somehow get itself written.

I think writing is such a great talent, and if I was better, I would love to be a writer.

When I start to write, words have become physical presence. It was to see if I could bring that private world to life that found its first expression through reading. I really dislike the romantic notion of the artist.

My idea of writing is of unflinching and continual effort, somehow trying to find the right words until you reach a point where you can make no further progress and you either have something or you don't.

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.

When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.

I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book.

When you're a writer, everything that interests you feeds into your work.

I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.

I write what's given me to write.

For a writer, published works are like fallen flowers, but the expected new work is like a calyx waiting to blossom.

I try to begin writing as close to a dreamlike state as I can get.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.

Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book.

When I wrote my first novel - I was nineteen - I did it very quickly. If you write fast, you feel like you're entering something not yet familiar - a world rather than thoughts about the world.

There is a myth that writers get to choose their stories. You don't get to choose your story any more than you get to choose your children. You can make the decision to write, but beyond that, at the end of the day, it's going to come out how it's going to come out.

In a way, I started 'Goon Squad' not even realizing I was writing a book. I thought I was just writing a few stories to stall before starting this other book that I wanted to write - or thought I wanted to write: I still haven't written it.

I think artists should really write more.