Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like… - Willa Cather

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never been told.

Ah! the terror and the delight of that moment when first we fear
ourselves! Until then we have not lived.

Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured; unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together.

One realizes that even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another – secret and passionate and intense – which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him. One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day . . .