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Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; 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.

— Willa Cather Willa Cather on Writing (1949)

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More quotes by Willa Cather

It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of.

We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it — for a little while.

O Pioneers! (1913)

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

O Pioneers! (1913)

The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.

O Pioneers! (1913)

No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.

Alexander's Bridge (1912)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Willa Cather (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.