8 Willa Cather Quotes on Creativity

Willa Cather quotes on creativity

22. I tell you there is no such thing as creative hate!

49. Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.

52. Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.

75. To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

83. The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter.

86. 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.

97. Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

99. She used to drag her mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window- or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation.