Willa Cather

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. - Willa Cather

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers. - Willa Cather

The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. - Willa Cather

The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always. - Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop, 1927