"... the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter song, as if it said: "This is reality, whether you like it or not. All those frivolities of sum… - Willa Cather

This is reality, whether you like it or not — all those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth.

She remembered home as a place where there were always too many children, a cross man and work piling up around a sick woman.

People can be lovers and enemies at the same time, you know. We were... A man and woman draw apart from that long embrace, and see what they have done to each other... In age we lose everything; even the power to love.

That irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.