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The years seemed to stretch before her like the land: spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning; the same pulling at the chain — until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released.

— Willa Cather O Pioneers! (1913)

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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.