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Cate Blanchett

Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett, AC (born May 14, 1969) is an Australian actress of film and theater. She is a two-time Academy Award winner.

Quotes

 * If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life — that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment — that would be the perfect state.
 * As quoted in Vanity Fair, Vol. 62, (1999)

 * Thank you of course to Miss Hepburn. The longevity of her career I think is inspiring to everyone. But most importantly and on behalf of everyone I know in The Aviator, thank you to Martin Scorsese. I hope my son will marry your daughter.
 * After winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for portraying Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator, (27 February 2005)

 * As random and as subjective as this award is, it means a great deal in a year of extraordinary, yet again, extraordinary performances by women ... And perhaps those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films with women at the center are niche experiences. They are not. Audiences want to see them, and in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.
 * After winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Blue Jasmine, (2 March 2014)

 * Well, I'm a product of the Australian film industry which by its very nature is independent, sometimes for better sometimes for worse. I suppose the collaborative nature of being independent is what feels natural to me, and when people talk about working in Hollywood I don't quite know what that means. Being part of the Indiana Jones franchise and The Lord of the Rings, that felt more like a departure for me. But in the end, I think the whole notion of the independent spirit is not just about the way a film is financed but about the creative thinking behind it, and sometimes that can exist in the mainstream; those sensibilities can cross over and audiences are interested in, not a homogenous way of storytelling but a diverse way of receiving a narrative.
 * Backstage press room, after winning the Independent Spirit Award for her performance in ''I'm Not There, in response to the question: "As an actress, do you prefer Independents over the mainstream?"

 * I think marriage is all about timing. Getting married is insanity; I mean, it's a risk – who knows if you're going to be together forever? But you both say, 'We're going to take this chance, in the same spirit.

 * What interested me was how much of a departure this was in that you have three interesting, across the generations, female characters, literally riding alongside the male characters. Also the emotional and psychological depth of the characters was, for me, a lot richer than I've seen in a western. But never once did it sacrifice the thrill of the chase. So it was a journey into the unknown for me.

 * I can be a real pessimist. You know that when you win an Oscar and you walk offstage and your first thought is: "Oh God, I've peaked."

 * It's been an enormous challenge and enormously gratifying. Andrew and I wanted to travel less and the opportunity of living and working in Sydney was irresistible, especially when it came to being able to give our children roots. I also felt drawn to the stimulating kind of environment that the theatre offers in a way that is completely different from film. To direct a company has its own challenges, and there's nothing like the terror and thrill that comes from performing live in front of an audience. So it's been a marvellous experience for both of us.
 * On running the Sydney Theatre Company with husband Andrew Upton. Quoted in:

 * I've done a lot of talking over the past six years. My husband and I have been running the Sydney Theatre Company and it's been magic – my kids have been able to see so many of those transient moments between acting and real life behind the scenes. But now that I've given it up I'm looking forward to being a bit quieter. I'm very conscious of that. There have been times when I've heard myself in the past and thought: "Aw, just shut up."

 * Of course one worries about getting older - we're all fearful of death, let's not kid ourselves. I'm simply not panicking as my laugh lines grow deeper. Who wants a face with no history, no sense of humor?

 * It's not just women in film, 18-year-old girls feel pressure to do preventative injecting. I see someone's face, someone's body who'd had children and I think they're the song lines of your experience, and why would you want to eradicate that? I look at people sort of entombing themselves and all you see is little pin holes of terror... and you think, just live your life, death is not going to be any easier just because your face can't move.

 * I remember when I came out of drama school I'd seen a lot of actors, brilliant actors who didn't work very often. And when you're starting out, there's more rejection than there is acceptance, and I said to myself, “I’ll give it five years. I don’t think I have a strong enough mettle to deal with the rejections."

 * In my career, I thought I've never wanted to get anywhere in particular. I just wanted to work with interesting people on interesting projects.

 * For me, the roles are the secondary part of the whole process to me strangely. It's about who you're being directed by and who the other actors are. Whenever I read a script, I think, 'wow, that's a great story,' and invariably I want to play one of the other characters, and the process of working out how to play the character you're offered is to work out why you aren't playing the other characters in a way. Maybe that's why I play roles of various different sizes. The challenge is not necessarily always the lead role, but in this case [Blue Jasmine] it was all those things combined.

 * You know you've made it when you've been moulded in miniature plastic. But you know what children do with Barbie dolls - it's a bit scary, actually.

 * No one is ever who they purport to be. And I suppose I'm most interested in the gap between who we project socially and who we really are.

 * I'm not very cautious or careful. It's always been more about having a variety of experiences than any planned trajectory... I think that in a way, projects choose you.

Quotes about Blanchett

 * She has this incredible ability to transform herself. Sometimes you're not sure it's her on screen. It's always fascinating; this capacity of being a totally different person, and yet being yourself. She's very inventive; working with her, I can tell right away she's very free.
 * Isabelle Huppert; quoted in:

 * I remember going to the Sunset 5 and just thinking, 'Who is that My goodness'. You just don't see people who have that kind of power and ability every day of the week.
 * David Fincher on seeing her performance in Elizabeth; quoted in:

 * [She] elevated most of our performances. She's exquisite.  She's a great friend.   She can read a scene like few actors can.  I find her to be grace incarnate.  I liked that she was playing a dancer.  It fit her because of who she is, because of her undeniable elegance.
 * Brad Pitt on his costar in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; quoted in:

 * That Blanchett could appear in the same Toronto Film Festival playing Elizabeth and Bob Dylan, both splendidly, is a wonder of acting.
 * Roger Ebert, in:

 * Years from now, when cinephiles are asked to name the movies' golden age, they'll say it was when Cate Blanchett was in them.
 * Richard Corliss, in:

 * She has the most extraordinary access to her emotions that I've come across in an actor.
 * Theatre director Benedict Andrews; quoted in:

 * As an actor, you either work off your own personality, and that's what you're peddling, or, like Cate, you draw out from the source material all the many dark, mysterious, and conflicting elements of the character that are going to make it engaging and trilling for the audience.
 * Geoffrey Rush; quoted in:

 * When we came to work, I realized of course that Cate has a fierce intelligence, an unbelievable integrity. Her powers of concentration are phenomenal. Above all, she has a great sense of humour which I think is the most important thing to have and she is a phenomenal family person. The fact that she is working on something with an incredible intensity and at the same time can completely switch off and become a member of an incredibly close family with her children and her husband. When I saw her playing Elizabeth, it was one of those rare moments that I forgot I was watching an actress and I believed I was watching a real person who had actually lived and existed in history. I think Cate is the most extraordinary actress and I'm thrilled we did this movie together.
 * Judi Dench, at the 2006 Women in Hollywood event, presenting her Notes on a Scandal costar with the Icon Award.

 * I wanted to do the part because Cate was playing Sheba. And she knows, because I've said it out loud in front of a lot of people. My admiration for her is absolutely unbounded. And we had a lot of laughs, which is always good.
 * Judi Dench; quoted in:

 * I saw Cate in Streetcar Named Desire on Wednesday night. Liv Ullman directed it. I will say right here that it was perhaps the greatest stage performance I have ever seen ... She showed us the unraveling of a fragile woman right before our eyes and did it with not a false moment ... What I so love about both Cate and Andrew [Upton] is they haven't an ounce of pretense, divahood– just brilliant, hardworking, regular people with a growing family.
 * Jane Fonda; quoted in:

 * That performance was as naked, as raw and extraordinary and astonishing and surprising and scary as anything I've ever seen, and it didn't have anything to do with what clothes she took off, you know what I mean? She took the layers of a person and just peeled them away. I thought I'd seen that play, I thought I knew all the lines by heart, because I've seen it so many times, but I'd never seen the play until I saw that performance.
 * Meryl Streep; quoted in:

 * [Cosmetic surgery] is idiocy, unless it is to remove a disfigurement. A small breast doesn't have to become big. I prefer to look at a natural woman. A woman should be courageous to become older, not be desperate to look younger than her age. With time, a woman's body is better. As a woman goes to work, has babies, she is strong. She has character. Look at Cate Blanchett.
 * Giorgio Armani; quoted in:

 * [Working with Blanchett again] was one of my motivations for getting involved [with Carol]. I had such an amazing time with her on I'm Not There, and watching that particular performance emerge was an extraordinary experience for me. I think it was for her, too. I was just blown away by what she did and who she is as a person; that's always coupled with my esteem for her. And that just continued to be fleshed out in every possible way on this ... She has incredible knowledge and instincts.
 * Todd Haynes; quoted in:

 * We only met at a party [during the making of The Lord of the Rings], we weren't on screen together. Well, we were on screen together but we didn't meet. Here [on The Hobbit], we had a whole week, or maybe two. That was a thrill because she's a great screen actor and a very congenial person, for me. She's based in theater. That's her main job at the moment, running a theater. So there wasn't a moment that we didn't have stuff to talk about.
 * Ian McKellen; quoted in:

 * She is extraordinary, completely committed and very gifted of course. She's also extremely generous, modest and always brings a sense of humour so it was just a pleasure to work with her.
 * Julian Rosefeldt, on directing and collaborating with her in Manifesto; quoted in:

 * Cate. I think Cate is kind of everybody's benchmark with everything she does. She does incredible work and always has.
 * Rooney Mara; quoted in:

 * At the moment, I'm obsessed with Cate Blanchett. I would love to act with her. We are costars in How to Train Your Dragon, but we don't ever get to work together, which is so sad. I would be anything with her onscreen. I would do anything. If she's reading this, she should know I will do whatever to act with her. She's so alive and present in every single moment, and not for one second do you feel like she's acting; you just feel like she's living the character and being in the moment. The acting is undetectable, and that is so exhilarating, and I feel like it would be so intoxicating to be an actor around her.
 * America Ferrera; quoted in:

 * Certainly some actors I'm just amazed by the amount of work that they do, and I think, “My God.” I feel quite humbled ... Cate Blanchett. She was in Los Angeles and we were doing a round table and I was just amazed. I just looked her up again on Google to see what she's done. And she runs a family, she runs a theater, she's done all these incredible films around the world, she just never stops and she's so attractive and she's so present. She's like superwoman.
 * Cate Blanchett; quoted in:

title: Cate Blanchett


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User:Ken Keeping

Note of March 19th, 2005
I haven't edited this page as much as I thought I might, but am posting today just to wish Keri Burwell a Happy 29th Birthday. I know that many mirrors or derivatives of Wikiquote have begun to sprung up, sometimes editing themselves to seem the original source of these articles to the casual observer, but I am a (sometimes) active member '''only at the original site, W i k i q u o t e. o r g''', with the user page http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/User:Ken_Keeping. I am NOT a deliberate contributor to " Q u o t e s P l a c e . c o m ", or any of the others. Such sites are allowed to use W i k i q u o t e material, under the GNU FDL, but they are contemptible to the extent they try to make the material seem to be originating with them.

Notes of 04/04/04 4:44 PM
Many of my postings to Wikiquote will probably be of relatively obscure or largely forgotten authors, whose writings I feel deserve at least a bit more attention than they have generally recieved. I will try to make some additions of such poets, essayists, and other writers at least once a month, and perhaps more, to the degree my other activities permit. I might only add to this User page when I feel it is important to make expressions upon some points that might not be appropriate in the Wikiquote articles, or their talk pages. I might alter it, or add to it, only a few times a year.

Tears
Not in the time of pleasure Hope doth set her bow;  But in the sky of sorrow,  Over the vale of woe. Through gloom and shadow look we On beyond the years! The soul would have no rainbow Had the eyes no tears.
 * John Vance Cheney
 * The Century Vol. 44, Issue 4 (August 1892) p.538

The Happiest Heart
Who drives the horses of the sun    Shall lord it but a day; Better the lowly deed were done,    And kept the humble way. The rust will find the sword of fame,    The dust will hide the crown; Ay, none shall nail so high his name    Time will not tear it down. The happiest heart that ever beat    Was in some quiet breast That found the common daylight sweet,    And left to Heaven the rest.
 * John Vance Cheney

All that I write on this particular page I release into the public domain, and my aim in providing quotes to this project is primarily to provide inspiring and enriching ideas to others, and encourage others to do the same.

Though such endeavours, may we all grow in awareness of ourselves and each other, the universe in which we dwell, and what ever may exist within it and beyond it.
 * Sincerely,
 * Ken

Notes of 03/19/04
To Keri Burwell,

 * Wherever you are, have a Happy Birthday, and seek the truth. Don't remain satisfied with lies.

 * Love,
 * Ken

 * Lesser passions flare and fade amidst ignorance and fear, and yearnings for adventure and security, but Love abides, Eternally, beyond all other things.  Satisfactions can come in many ways... not all of them good, for many are the brief delights and passing satisfactions that lies and delusions can provide, but profound, enduring contentment, and ultimate happiness can come only through the Love of Truth, and the Truths of Love. - Ken Keeping

 * Think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. - Khalil Gibran

 * Those who delight in lies, who delight in slanders, who delight in gloating at the torments and the misery that they can cause others with deceptions, are reliable friends to no one, no matter how close, not even to themselves. They are manipulators who know not the beauties that they miss... amidst the foulness of their lies. - Ken Keeping 19:58, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave. — Mahatma Gandhi

 * All the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love. — Eleanor Farjeon

 * I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. —  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 * If you deceive someone, you lose one of life's greatest treasures, you lose the capacity to trust.  Because without trust, love is not possible.  — Osho

 * Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy —in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other. —Robert Heinlein in Stranger In A Strange Land

 * Where there is the greatest love, there are always miracles. — Willa Cather

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Ken Keeping


text:
Colin Powell

Colin Luther Powell (b. 5 April 1937– d. 18 October 2021) was an American politician, diplomat and four-star general who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African-American Secretary of State. Prior to the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, he and his successor, Condoleezza Rice, were the highest-ranking African Americans in the history of the federal executive branch (by virtue of the Secretary of State standing fourth in the presidential line of succession). He served as the 16th United States National Security Advisor from 1987 to 1989 and as the 12th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993.

1990s

 * Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it.
 * Remark made as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announcing the U.S. gulf war plan against Saddam Hussein's army. Pentagon press briefing (23 January 1991).

 * That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in.
 * Reported as a comment on "the number of Iraqi dead from the combined allied air and ground campaign" by Tyler, Patrick. "After The War; Powell Says U.S. Will Stay In Iraq 'For Some Months.'" New York Times, March 23 1991, pp. 1,4.

 * The United Nations will spearhead our efforts to manage the new conflicts (that afflict our world)....Yes the principles of the United Nations Charter are worth our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
 * General Colin Powell, 21 April 1993, receiving the UN-USA Global Leadership Award.

My American Journey (1996)

 * The people had fled at our approach, except for an old woman too feeble to move... We burned down the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo cigarette lighters... [because] Ho Chi Minh had said the people were like the sea in which his guerrillas swam... We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable.

 * If a [helicopter] spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him.

 * The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting in above-average effort.

 * The policies — determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred, who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live — were an antidemocratic disgrace ... I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well placed ... managed to wangle slots in reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.

 * Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war [Vietnam], vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand.

Letter to Patrick Leahy (1999)

 * Letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy (18 May 1999) - Full text online

 * Dear Senator Leahy, thank you for your recent letter asking my views on the proposed flag protection amendment. I love our flag, our Constitution and our country with a love that has no bounds. I defended all three for 35 years as a soldier and was willing to give my life in their defense.
 * Americans revere their flag as a symbol of the Nation. Indeed, it is because of that reverence that the amendment is under consideration. Few countries in the world would think of amending their Constitution for the purpose of protecting such a symbol.
 * We are rightfully outraged when anyone attacks or desecrates our flag. Few Americans do such things and when they do they are subject to the rightful condemnation of their fellow citizens. They may be destroying a piece of cloth, but they do no damage to our system of freedom which tolerates such desecration.
 * If they are destroying a flag that belongs to someone else, that's a prosecutable crime. If it is a flag they own, I really don't want to amend the Constitution to prosecute someone for foolishly desecrating their own property. We should condemn them and pity them instead.
 * I understand how strongly so many of my fellow veterans and citizens feel about the flag and I understand the powerful sentiment in state legislatures for such an amendment. I feel the same sense of outrage. But I step back from amending the Constitution to relieve that outrage. The First Amendment exists to insure that freedom of speech and expression applies not just to that with which we agree or disagree, but also that which we find outrageous. I would not amend that great shield of democracy to hammer a few miscreants. The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away.
 * Finally, I shudder to think of the legal morass we will create trying to implement the body of law that will emerge from such an amendment.
 * If I were a member of Congress, I would not vote for the proposed amendment and would fully understand and respect the views of those who would. For or against, we all love our flag with equal devotion.

2000s

 * The sanctions exist — not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction ... And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq.
 * Press remarks with Foreign Minister of Egypt Amre Moussa, in Ittihadiya Palace, Cairo (24 February 2001).

 * What the hell, what are these guys thinking about? Can't you get these guys back in the box?
 * Remark made to Joint Chiefs of Staff General Shelton regarding comments by Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld, advocating an attack on Iraq, even before the battle plan for attacking the Taliban was formulated, shortly after the “the crucial meeting took place on September 15 in the Laurel Lodge at Camp David, at which Wolfowitz made the case for action against Iraq.” . Also see . (Remark from 9/2001 shortly after 9/11).

 * Far from being the Great Satan, I would say that we are the Great Protector. We have sent men and women from the armed forces of the United States to other parts of the world throughout the past century to put down oppression. We defeated Fascism. We defeated Communism. We saved Europe in World War I and World War II. We were willing to do it, glad to do it. We went to Korea. We went to Vietnam. All in the interest of preserving the rights of people. And when all those conflicts were over, what did we do? Did we stay and conquer? Did we say, "Okay, we defeated Germany. Now Germany belongs to us? We defeated Japan, so Japan belongs to us"? No. What did we do? We built them up. We gave them democratic systems which they have embraced totally to their soul. And did we ask for any land? No, the only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead. And that is the kind of nation we are.
 * MTV Global Discussion (14 February 2002).

 * Capital is a coward. It flees from corruption and bad policies, conflict and unpredictability. It shuns ignorance, disease and illiteracy. Capital goes where it is welcomed and where investors can be confident of a return on the resources they have put at risk. It goes to countries where women can work, children can read, and entrepreneurs can dream.
 * As quoted by Ambassador Cameron R. Hume in a speech on U.S. Government Initiatives in South Africa at the American Chamber of Commerce, Johannesburg, South Africa (18 September 2002).

 * My heart grieves when I think about the situation in the Middle East. I've worked very hard on this for two years, and for years before that. But trust is broken down. We have to do everything we can in our power — all of us, the United States, the European Union, any other nation that has the ability to influence the situation in the Middle East — to work with the Palestinians to put in place a leadership that is responsible, with representative institutions of government that will clamp down on terrorism, that will say to its people, "Terrorism is not getting us anywhere. It is not producing what we want: a Palestinian state. It is keeping us away from a Palestinian state." And we also have to say to our Israeli friends that you have to do more to deal with the humanitarian concerns of the Palestinian people, and you have to understand that a Palestinian state, when it's created, must be a real state, not a phony state that's diced into a thousand different pieces.
 * Address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (26 January 2003), as quoted in "Secretary of Incoherence" in National Review (27 January 2003).

 * There is nothing in American experience or in American political life or in our culture that suggests we want to use hard power. But what we have found over the decades is that unless you do have hard power — and here I think you're referring to military power — then sometimes you are faced with situations that you can't deal with. I mean, it was not soft power that freed Europe. It was hard power. And what followed immediately after hard power? Did the United States ask for dominion over a single nation in Europe? No. Soft power came in the Marshall Plan. Soft power came with American GIs who put their weapons down once the war was over and helped all those nations rebuild. We did the same thing in Japan. So our record of living our values and letting our values be an inspiration to others I think is clear. And I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of or apologize for with respect to what America has done for the world. We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we've done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.
 * Response to a question by George Carey (a former Archbishop of Canterbury), after the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (26 January 2003), as to whether the US had given due consideration to the use of "soft power" vs "hard power" against the regime of Saddam Hussein; this has sometimes been portrayed as an accusation by an Archbishop of Canterbury that the United States was engaged in "empire building", in which Powell's response has been paraphrased:
 * Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.

 * There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more.
 * Remarks to the United Nations Security Council (5 February 2003); in an interview (September 2005) with Barbara Walters, Powell was asked about the Security Council speech and responded that it was a "blot" on his record... "it will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now."

 * There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.
 * As quoted in The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (2003) by Oren Harari, p. 164.

 * I'm sleeping like a baby, too. Every two hours, I wake up, screaming.
 * Upon hearing that President Bush was "sleeping like a baby" on the eve of war with Iraq, as quoted in "The Tragedy of Colin Powell" (19 February 2004).

 * You break it, you own it.
 * As quoted in Plan of Attack (2004) by Bob Woodward, a book in which he was a key source, cautioning President Bush before the Iraqi war that he would be responsible for the fate of the Iraqi's after the fall of the Hussein regime.

 * This may sound a little improper, but when the Vice President and I are alone it's Colin and Dick.
 * As quoted in Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees (23 April 2004).

 * There is only one China. Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation, and that remains our policy, our firm policy.
 * Interview with CNN (27 October 2004), as quoted in "Warnings by Powell to Taiwan Provoke a Diplomatic Dispute" in The New York Times (28 October 2004).

 * We want to see both sides not take unilateral action that would prejudice an eventual outcome, a reunification that all parties are seeking.
 * On Chinese and Taiwanese relations, in interview with Phoenix Television of Hong Kong (27 October 2004), as quoted in "Warnings by Powell to Taiwan Provoke a Diplomatic Dispute" in The New York Times (28 October 2004).

 * Nothing was spun to me... What really upset me more than anything else was that there were people in the intelligence community that had doubts about some of this sourcing, but those doubts never surfaced up to us. (Powell told David Frost in a BBC television interview)
 * Quoted in Breaking Ranks Larry Wilkerson Attacked the Iraq War. In the Process, He Lost the Friendship of Colin Powell. Washington Post, by Richard Lei (19 January 2006)

 * I wonder what will happen if we put half a million troops on the ground, and scour Iraq from one corner to the other, and find no weapons of mass destruction?
 * Quoted by Lawrence Wilkerson in Breaking Ranks Larry Wilkerson Attacked the Iraq War. In the Process, He Lost the Friendship of Colin Powell. Washington Post, by Richard Lei (19 January 2006)

 * I wouldn't characterize it the way Larry has, calling it a cabal... what Larry is suggesting in his comments is that very often maybe Mr. Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney would take decisions in to the president that the rest of us weren't aware of. That did happen, on a number of occasions.
 * Quoted in Breaking Ranks Larry Wilkerson Attacked the Iraq War. In the Process, He Lost the Friendship of Colin Powell. Washington Post, by Richard Lei (19 January 2006)

 * I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America. I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards — Purple Heart, Bronze Star — showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life. Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way.
 * Meet the Press (19 October 2008) interview with Tom Brokaw. - Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan's Gravesite.

 * I think he is a transformational figure. He is a new generation coming into the world — onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I'll be voting for Senator Barack Obama.
 * Meet the Press (19 October 2008).

 * The information I presented to the U.N. was vetted by the CIA. Every word came from the CIA. And they stood behind all that information. (From a 2009 interview by Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy )
 * Quoted in A Reluctant Warrior? An Examination of Gen. Colin Powell’s Bloody Legacy from Iraq to Latin America, Democracy Now!, October 19, 2021

The Powell Principles (2003)

 * Quotes of Powell from The Powell Principles (2003) by Oren Harari

 * Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.

 * Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.

 * If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.
 * This evokes Will Durant's famous summation of Aristotle: "Excellence then is not an act, but a habit."

 * Every organization should tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes.

2010s

 * There's also a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is they still sort of look down on minorities.
 * As quoted in NBC's Meet the Press (2013).

It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership (2012)

 * As you will see, there are no conclusions or recommendations, just my observations. The chapters are freestanding. You can read them straight through or jump in anywhere. Everyone has life lessons and stories. These are mine. All I can say is that they worked for me.
 * p. xii

 * I may be down, but never out. An infantry officer can do anything.
 * p. 6

 * Whenever I'm faced with a difficult choice, my approach has always been to make an estimate of the situation- a familiar military process. What's the situation? What's the mission? What are the different courses of action? Which looks most likely to succeed? Now, follow your informed instinct, decide, and execute forcefully; throw the mass of your forces and energy behind the choice. Then take a deep breath and hope it works, remembering that "hope is a bad supper, but makes a good breakfast."
 * p. 14

 * Success ultimately rests on small things, lots of small things. Leaders have to have a feel for small things — a feel for what is going in in the depths of an organization where small things reside. The more senior you become, the more you are isolated by pomp and staff, and the harder and more necessary it becomes to know what is going on six floors down. One way is to leave the top floor and its grand accoutrements and get down into the bowels for real. Don't tell anyone you are coming. Avoid advance notices that produce crash cleanups, frantic preparations, and PowerPoint presentations.
 * p. 18

 * It is the human gesture that counts. Yes, medals, stock options, promotions, bonuses, and pay raises are fine. But to really reach people, you need to touch them. A kind word, a pat on the back, a "well done," provided one-on-one and not by mob email is the way you share credit. It is the way you appeal to the dreams, inspirations, anxieties, and fears of your followers. They want to be the best they can be; a good leader lets them know it when they are.
 * p. 21

 * When things go badly, it is your fault, not theirs. You are responsible. Analyze how it happened, make the necessary fixes, and move on. No mass punishments or floggings. Fire people if you need to, train harder, insist on a higher level of performance, give halftime rants if that shakes a group up. But never forget that failure is your responsibility. Share the credit, take the blame, and quietly find out and fix things that went wrong. A psychotherapist who owned a school for severely troubled kids had a rule: "Whenever you place the cause of one of your actions outside yourself, it's an excuse and not a reason." This rule works for everybody, but it works especially for leaders.
 * p. 21-22

 * In the "heat of battle"- whether military or corporate- kindness, like calmness, reassures followers and holds their confidence. Kindness connects you with other human beings in a bond of mutual respect. If you care for your followers and show them kindness, they will reciprocate and care for you. They will not let you down or let you fail. They will accomplish whatever you have put in front of them.
 * p. 23

 * Naysayers are everywhere. They feel it's the safest position to be in. It's the easiest armor to wear... And they may be right in their negativity; reality may be on their side. But chances are very good that it's not. You can only use their naysaying as one line in the spectrum of inputs to your decision. Listen to everyone you need to, and then go with your fearless instinct. Each of us must work to become a hardheaded realist, or else we risk wasting our time and energy pursuing impossible dreams. Yet constant naysayers pursue no less impossible dreams. Their fear and cynicism move nothing forward. They kill progress. How many cynics built empires, great cities, or powerful corporations?
 * p. 27

 * Always do your very best. Even when no one else is looking, you always are. Don't disappoint yourself.
 * p. 36

 * When I was a young second lieutenant, I loved my job. I loved the Army. I put everything I had into doing the job well. And I was content. Nothing was promised, and I had few expectations. Count on maybe becoming a lieutenant colonel and retiring with twenty years of service at half pay, I was told. Just be thankful for anything that comes after that and thank your soldiers for making it happen. If you hit the walls of the pyramid, find satisfaction there. Be happy with that prospect. And I was.
 * p. 65

 * In the Army, we are measured constantly and exhaustively. We get evaluation reports annually and every time we change jobs or our supervisor changes jobs. Our immediate supervisor evaluates us. So does our next higher superior, and his evaluation compares us with all our peers who serve under him. Our school performance is graded. Our spouses are silently observed. Our careers are obsessively examined and managed. The reason is simple and obvious. We do not hire from outside. If we need a battalion commander fifteen years from now, we have to grow one now from a promising new second lieutenant. Sergeants major are not hired in from Walmart or Hertz. It takes many years to grow them from basic training recruits.
 * p. 67

 * But leaders are not gods. Their understanding is never totally clear, totally accurate, totally certain. Every leader is human... imperfectly human. Water-walkers sometimes fail, and quiet walkers sometimes end up on top. Leaders need to watch all their subordinate; work with all of them, encourage the hotshots, but invest in the others. Always be prepared to change your mind, however firmly made up, when dealing with those infinitely faceted beings we call people. The leader must never forget that he may end up working for one of them.
 * p. 70

'''
 * I believe that when you first take over a new outfit, start out trusting the people there unless you have real evidence not to. If you trust them, they will trust you, and those bonds will strengthen over time. They will work hard to make sure you do well. They will protect you and cover you. They will take care of you.
 * p. 75
 * You can't make good decisions unless you have good information and can separate facts from opinion and speculation.'''
 * p. 113

 * Facts are verified information that is then presented as objective reality. The rub here is the verified part. How do you verify verified? Facts are slippery, and so is verification. Today's verification may not be tomorrow's. It turns out that facts may not really be facts; they can change as the verification changes; they may only tell part of the story, not the whole story; or they may be so qualified by verifiers that they're empty of information.
 * p. 113

 * Verified facts don't always come pure, but with qualifiers. My warning radar always goes on alert when qualifiers are attached to facts. Qualifiers like: My best judgement... I think... As best I can tell... Usually reliable sources say... For the most part... We've been told... and the like. I don't dismiss facts so qualified; but I'm cautious about taking them to the bank.
 * p. 115

 * Don't get me wrong. I don't look down on intelligence gatherers, and I don't mean to condemn any specific intelligence staff or the intelligence community. It's a hard, stressful, vitally necessary job. During my career I've worked with intelligence agencies and experts of every kind, from a young lieutenant, battalion-level intelligence officer to all sixteen branches of the U.S. intelligence community. With rare exceptions, intelligence analysts do all they can to give you the information and facts you need to understand the enemy and the situation and come up with the best decision. I found over the years that my intelligence staffs told the best story when I worked with them as they were putting it together. I questioned them constantly; I sent written analyses back, loaded with scribbles in the margins; I challenged them to defend their analyses. Staffs appreciated the challenge. They wanted to get the story right as much as I did.
 * p. 115

 * As successes come your way, remember that you didn't do it alone. It is always we.
 * p. 266

 * The people in my life made me what I am.
 * p. 279

2020s

 * It’s just like in the military — you argue, you debate something, but once the president has made a decision, that becomes a decision for the Cabinet.
 * As quoted from CNN's ‘Larry King Live’ in Colin Powell Leaves Many Leadership Lessons For Corporate Executives, Forbes, October 18, 2021

 * I didn’t have any choice... What choice did I have? He’s the president.
 * Quoted in Colin Powell Was a Nice Man Who Helped Destroy Iraq, Peter Maass, The Intercept, (October 18, 2021)

Quotes about Powell

 * During the transition to the new Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright famously asked Gen. Colin Powell, then chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?"
 * Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Congress loots the Treasury for U.S. war machine — while bickering over Build Back Better, Salon, (December 7, 2021)

 * There was a brief moment after 9/11 when Colin Powell said “we should not rush to satisfy the desire for revenge.” It was a great moment, an extraordinary moment, because what he was actually asking people to do was to stay with a sense of grief, mournfulness, and vulnerability.
 * Judith Butler Interview in The Believer. May 2003

 * After touring the South, General Colin Powell concluded that there was no impediment to a black being elected president in America, noting that he received his strongest support from white Southerners.
 * Ann Coulter, How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must) (2004), p. 175-176

 * what the civil rights movement did, it seems to me, was to create a new terrain for asking new questions and moving in new directions. It's not a betrayal that people like Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and the Black conservatives who are the heart of government are where they are. As a matter of fact, the civil rights movement demanded access, right? But I don't think that we can assume that what was done in the 1950s and 1960s is going to do the work of the 1980s and 1990s.
 * 2003 interview in Conversations with Angela Davis Edited by Sharon Lynette Jones (2021)

 * Why didn't the doubts reach Powell? Perhaps because then he wouldn't have given the speech at all? "That's right," Wilkerson says, shooting a hard, solemn stare across the restaurant table. "That's right." He also says, "I am prepared to entertain the idea that they used him."
 * Breaking Ranks Larry Wilkerson Attacked the Iraq War. In the Process, He Lost the Friendship of Colin Powell. Washington Post, by Richard Lei (19 January 2006)

 * I can tell you that having been intimately involved in the preparation of Secretary Powell for his five February 2003 presentation at the UN Security Council, neither of those dissents in any fashion or form were registered with me or the Secretary by the DCI, George Tenent, by the DDCI, John McLaughlin, or by any of their many analysts who were in the room with us for those five, six days and nights at the Central Intelligence Agency... In fact it was presented in the firmest language possible that the mobile biological labs and the sketches we had drawn of them for the Secretary's presentation were based on the iron clad evidence of multiple sources.
 * Lawrence Wilkerson in Interview transcript of the PBS program NOW about pre-war intelligence, PBS (February 3, 2006)

 * Powell’s penchant for playing footsie with atrocity dates back more than 50 years. His ability to look the other way when doing otherwise might hamper his career began with the massacre at My Lai, when he whistled past reports of civilians being slaughtered by U.S. forces in Vietnam without tarnishing his own brass-to-be.Powell was up to his eyeballs in the Iran/Contra scandal but again emerged unscathed, despite having served as top deputy to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who was indicted for his role in the scandal but later pardoned by George H.W. Bush... While serving as chairman of the joint chiefs, Powell’s endorsement of a more active U.S. military engagement in Somalia toward the end of the first Bush’s lone term led directly to the shootdown of two Blackhawk helicopters in Mogadishu in the summer of 1993... As chairman of the joint chiefs under the first President Bush, Powell first gained public gravitas as a military man during the 1990 invasion of Panama, which took the lives of thousands of civilians. He went on to famously preside over the first Gulf War, which we are still fighting in various forms some 28 years later. After spending the Clinton administration on the shelf, Powell was welcomed back into the circles of Republican power when he became secretary of state under George W. Bush.
 * GOP “Never Trumpers” Just Think He’s Bad for the Brand, by William Rivers Pitt, 'Truthout' ( 8 October 2019)

 * *Powell, like so many other Republican “Never Trumpers,” doesn’t criticize Trump for his policies, which are mostly in line with what has been mainstream Republican thinking since Barry Goldwater’s time. Powell doesn’t like Trump because he is bad for the Republican brand, period. Colin Powell has been living in a glass house since 1968. It’s high time someone shattered it, if only to spare the rest of us the image of yet another Republican war criminal being treated like a Respected Man on television. One Henry Kissinger is enough.
 * GOP “Never Trumpers” Just Think He’s Bad for the Brand, by William Rivers Pitt, 'Truthout' ( 8 October 2019)

 * Some of [Clinton’s] anger was privately aimed at Colin Powell in a personal pique. Talking with reporters in later years, Clinton would often harp on Powell’s role in Somalia, that he had signed on to the partial escalation and yet had accepted none of the blame.
 * David Halberstam in his book "War in a Time of Peace“ quoted in GOP “Never Trumpers” Just Think He’s Bad for the Brand, by William Rivers Pitt, 'Truthout' ( 8 October 2019)
 * Colin Powell is a damn war criminal, and to a great many progressive voters, his endorsement of anything is a red-flag warning to run the other way. His inclusion last night was egregiously unnecessary and possibly damaging.
 * William Rivers Pitt in AOC Was the Highlight of DNC’s Night Two Despite Speaking Just 97 Seconds, Truthout August 18, 2020.

 * Colin Powell had a long career in which he implemented key imperialist policies — from Vietnam in his youth, to working with Ronald Reagan and both Bush presidencies. His imperialist record is too long for this article, but here are some highlights: Colin Powell was a senior tactical adviser during the Vietnam War, where he committed numerous brutal war crimes. In his [2003] memoir My American Journey, Powell explains that he led South Vietnamese soldiers in an attack on a village full of families, elderly people, and other non-combatants: The people had fled at our approach, except for an old woman too feeble to move... We burned down the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo cigarette lighters... [because] Ho Chi Minh had said the people were like the sea in which his guerrillas swam... We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable.   Powell also stated that  If a [helicopter] spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him.   These were not violent tactics that Powell himself invented, of course; it was the strategy of the United States in the war. And of course, Powell executed that strategy well, rising through the ranks of power.
 * Colin Powell Brought “Diversity” to War Crimes and Imperialism, Tatiana Cozzarelli and Otto Fors, Left Voice (18 October 2021)

 * It’s a terrible paradox in the life of Colin Powell, who died Monday, that the most important moment of his celebrated career came not when he led troops under fire in Vietnam, or when he orchestrated the successful expulsion of Iraqi invaders from Kuwait in 1991, or when he became the nation’s first African American national-security adviser and Secretary of State.It came, instead, on the dais of the United Nations Security Council, in 2003, when Powell, who was then Secretary of State, made the case for the invasion of Iraq, based on the conclusion that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and thus had to be removed by force. The enduring image from that moment is Powell holding up a tiny vial of white powder, which stood for what was supposed to be Saddam’s anthrax, and, mortgaging his esteemed reputation and all the credibility of the U.S. government, telling the world that the U.S. had no choice but to go to war.
 * Colin Powell’s Fateful Moment, Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker, (October 18, 2021)

 * Powell was used. Bush, Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, who was then the Secretary of Defense, cynically enlisted him and his enormous credibility to make the flimsy, and ultimately faulty, case for war. As Powell recounted to one of his aides, according to Robert Draper, the author of “To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq,’’ Cheney had said to him, “You’re the most popular man in America. Do something with that popularity.”  And so Powell did. Draper makes clear that Powell harbored doubts about the invasion of Iraq from the get-go. Powell might have resigned before the March 2003 invasion; if he had done that, he would have almost certainly have delayed the invasion, or scuttled it entirely. But, in the most fateful decision of his career, Powell chose to remain what he always aspired to be: the good soldier.
 * Colin Powell’s Fateful Moment, Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker, (October 18, 2021)

 * At the personal level, Colin Powell was a nice man. He was also a trailblazer. But he was also a military leader and key strategist of an empire that killed countless people and undermined the sovereignty of multiple nations. In our memorials, we must be honest about all of this.
 * Marc Lamont Hill  Twitter October 18, 2021

 * Powell’s friends in America tend to briefly note, in the soft glaze of his own regret, the most consequential act of his life. On February 5, 2003, Powell made a 76-minute speech to the United Nations Security Council in which he argued the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq. He insisted that Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, was overseeing a secret program to make weapons of mass destruction. Powell brandished satellite photos of what he confidently said were decontamination trucks, aluminum tubes, and other WMD paraphernalia. He even held up a vial that he said could contain anthrax.There was, of course, a big problem with all of his assertions: They were lies. The intelligence behind his speech was the opposite of emphatic — it was false, manipulated, and fabricated. The trucks were just trucks. The tubes were just tubes. There was no anthrax. There was, more fundamentally, no reason to invade Iraq. Nonetheless, thanks to Powell’s presentation, the Bush administration went ahead with its plans, and in the ensuing catastrophe, at least several hundred thousand Iraqis lost their lives, as well as more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers.
 * Colin Powell Was a Nice Man Who Helped Destroy Iraq, Peter Maass, The Intercept, (October 18, 2021)

 * Powell resigned from the Bush administration in 2004 and never really owned up to what he had done. He recognized that his U.N. speech was inaccurate and described it, in an interview with celebrity journalist Barbara Walters, as “painful” and a “blot” on his career. Those comments, not long after he left office, were pretty much as far as he would ever go in terms of introspection or criticism. He was unable to admit the truth that his chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson now acknowledges. “I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council,” Wilkerson has said.The “blot” did not matter that much to Powell’s reputation in the U.S., because after the Iraq disaster, he continued to blaze a lucrative path in the corporate world, joining the board of directors of Salesforce and Bloom Energy and becoming a “strategic adviser” to the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. (He was already very rich — he had received a $6 million advance for his 1995 memoir “My American Journey.”) He was a trailblazer, in this way, for a generation of retired generals who have coasted into 1 percent status thanks to the flattering reviews they receive in cultural and political circles no matter the actual consequences of their government service.
 * Colin Powell Was a Nice Man Who Helped Destroy Iraq, Peter Maass, The Intercept, (October 18, 2021)

 * they are acceptable. The Colin Powells of America. It was such a phenomenon to me, that Colin Powell was so deeply loved by the American media and actually tabbed as becoming president. And when you look back at the man, you sort of understood what could be more American than someone who was willing to die for this country. You know, then then a man who was a general, then a man who was that conservative, you know, a man who was also fair skinned, which was extremely important and who had Republican leanings.
 * Gloria Naylor, Interview with PBS (2000)

 * But let’s be very clear about Powell’s total failure once he became one of the Washington wise men. He accepted the false WMD narrative and put his prestige behind it. Now, to be fair, I believed it too – I worked in that field during Gulf War 1.0 and understood the capabilities Saddam had then. But it turned out to be baloney a decade later, sparking the disaster that was Gulf War 2.0. From his public actions afterwards, Powell seemed outraged not so much by the war itself than the fact that being caught falsely pushing the meme damaged his credibility.
 * Kurt Schlichter, Colin Powell and the Crisis of the Boomer Elite, Townhall, 19 October 2021

 * Powell became a reliably Democrat-voting Republican, the kind CNN would wheel out every election cycle to explain how actual Republicans are terrible. He was beloved in Washington as one of the wisemen because of this; it certainly helped wash off some of the stink of being caught up in the mustard gas fraud. Grimly, at the end, his passing exemplified the worst of the people he thought were the best and enjoyed being one of, with focus on his race and his taking of the vaxx sacrament and a soft-pedaling of his flaws.
 * Kurt Schlichter, Colin Powell and the Crisis of the Boomer Elite, Townhall, 19 October 2021

 * President Biden ordered flags at the White House to be flown at half-staff in honor of General Colin Powell, who died Monday at the age of 84. Powell was the first Black secretary of state, the first Black and youngest chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first Black national security adviser. On Monday, tributes poured in from both Republican and Democratic leaders. President Biden called Powell a, quote, “patriot of unmatched honor and dignity.”But in other parts of the world, Powell is remembered very differently. In Iraq, the journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who famously threw a shoe at President George W. Bush, tweeted that he was sad Powell had died before being tried for his crimes in Iraq. While serving as secretary of state under Bush, General Powell played a pivotal role in paving the way for the U.S. invasion. It was February 5th, 2003, that Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council and made the case for a first strike on Iraq. Powell’s message was clear: Iraq possessed extremely dangerous weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam Hussein was systematically trying to deceive U.N. inspectors by hiding the prohibited weapons....All of Colin Powell’s main claims about weapons of mass destruction turned out to be false.
 * Amy Goodman, A Reluctant Warrior? An Examination of Gen. Colin Powell’s Bloody Legacy from Iraq to Latin America, Democracy Now!, October 19, 2021

 * Powell was one of the Reagan administration’s point people in Central America and, as the point person, helped to tee up and then legitimate, when necessary, the Salvadoran military dictatorships and the Guatemalan and other militaries in the region that were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents — and so, in the case of Guatemala, like 200,000 or more mostly Mayan Indigenous people. And so, like, in 1983, for example, Powell was part of a fact-finding kind of mission, that included Jeane Kirkpatrick and Weinberger...to go confirm the Salvadoran military and government were doing the right thing under Duarte. And, you know, they found that they were doing the right thing and that the U.S. should continue heavily funding and training these murderous militaries. He never said anything about...the massacre of El Sumpul, where about 600 people were killed, was perpetrated by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government; the massacre of El Mozote, where a thousand people were killed, an entire town wiped out, half of the victims under age 12.. Powell seemed to have amnesia about that...and other massacres were completely ignored....Now, some historians will call Powell a peacenik almost, a liberal, which, I mean, if you’re comparing him to like Alexander Haig or some just uber fascist like that, then, yeah, but in the larger scheme of empire and militarism, Colin Powell has been, you know, was always, a loyal cadre to mass-murdering empire.
 * Roberto Lovato in A Reluctant Warrior? An Examination of Gen. Colin Powell’s Bloody Legacy from Iraq to Latin America, Democracy Now!,  October 19, 2021

 * So, the thing to remember about that period is that the entire global community was against the invasion. So, when Colin Powell and the Bush administration says that they were vetting this information, they were not listening not only to their allies, they were not listening to what the United Nations itself was actually doing and had essentially proven that there were no weapons of mass destruction. But the administration was determined to go, and Colin Powell basically acceded to that, as he would do both prior to that speech, as he did with the World Conference Against Racism, when the United States and Israel were the only two countries that pulled out... So, there does have to be an accounting for that record. There’s no way to kind of pretty it up. It was atrocious. And again, hundreds of thousands — in some estimates, up to a million — people died as a result of that war.
 * Clarence Lusane in A Reluctant Warrior? An Examination of Gen. Colin Powell’s Bloody Legacy from Iraq to Latin America, Democracy Now!,  October 19, 2021

title: Colin Powell


text:
Willa Cather

Willa Sibert Cather (7 December 1873 – 24 April 1947) is among the most eminent American authors, known for her depictions of US life in her novels.

Quotes

 * No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Two people, when they love each other, grow alike in their tastes and habits and pride, but their moral natures (whatever we may mean by that canting expression) are never welded. The base one goes on being base, and the noble one noble, to the end.
 * Alexander's Bridge (1912) Ch. 8

 * There's nothing so dangerous as sitting still. You've only got one life, one youth, and you can let it slip through your fingers if you want to; nothing easier. Most people do that.
 * The Bohemian Girl (1912)

 * It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of.
 * Youth and the Bright Medusa, "A Gold Slipper" (1920)

 * The world there was the flat world of the ancients; to the east, a cornfield that stretched to daybreak; to the west, a corral that reached to the sunset; between, the conquests of peace, dearer-bought than those of war.
 * Youth and the Bright Medusa, "A Wagner Matinee" (1920)

 * The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
 * One of Ours (1922), Bk. II, Ch. 6

 * The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy. When it flung wide its cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at evening, it left behind it a spent and exhausted world.
 * One of Ours (1922), Bk. II, Ch. 6

 * Beautiful women, whose beauty meant more than it said... was their brilliancy always fed by something coarse and concealed? Was that their secret?
 * A Lost Lady (1923), Part I, Ch. 7

 * He had seen the end of an era, the sunset of the pioneer. He had come upon it when already its glory was nearly spent. So in the buffalo times a traveller used to come upon the embers of a hunter's fire on the prairies, after the hunter was up and gone; the coals would be trampled out, but the ground was warm, and the flattened grass where he had slept and where his pony had grazed, told the story. This was the very end of the road-making West; the men who had put plains and mountains under the iron harness were old; some were poor, and even the successful ones were hunting for rest and a brief reprieve from death. It was already gone, that age; nothing could ever bring it back. The taste and smell and song of it, the visions those men had seen in the air and followed, — these he had caught in a kind of afterglow in their own faces, — and this would always be his.
 * A Lost Lady (1923), Part II, Ch. 9

 * My familiar spirit is like an old wild turkey that forsakes a feeding ground as soon as it sees tracks of people-especially if the people are readers, book-buyers. It's a crafty bird and it wants to go where there aint no readers That's the truth: they go and paw a place all up and spoil it for me. It isn't my secret anymore.
 * Letter to Dorothy Canfield Fisher (27 February 1924), published in The Selected Letters of Willa Cather (2013), edited by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout

 * Directly under his feet was the French stronghold, — scattered spires and slated roofs flashing in the rich, autumnal sunlight; the little capital which was just then the subject of so much discussion in Europe, and the goal of so many fantastic dreams.
 * Shadows on the Rock (1931), Book I, Ch. 1

 * Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family — but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.
 * Shadows on the Rock (1931), Book III, Ch. 5

 * Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves.
 * Shadows on the Rock (1931), Epilogue

O Pioneers! (1913)

 * The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness.
 * Part I, Ch. 9

 * Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.
 * Part I, Ch. 2

 * The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.
 * Part I, Ch. 5

 * Alexandra drew her shawl closer about her and stood leaning against the frame of the mill, looking at the stars which glittered so keenly through the frosty autumn air. She always loved to watch them, to think of their vastness and distance, and of their ordered march. It fortified her to reflect upon the great operations of nature, and when she thought of the law that lay behind them, she felt a sense of personal security.
 * Part I, Ch. 5

 * She had never known before how much the country meant to her. The chirping of the insects in the long grass had been like the sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.
 * Part I, Ch. 5

 * Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him... We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder.
 * Part II, Ch. 3

 * There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.
 * Part II, Ch. 4

 * Perhaps I am like Carrie Jensen, the sister of one of my hired men. She had never been out of the cornfields, and a few years ago she got despondent and said life was just the same thing over and over, and she didn't see the use of it. After she had tried to kill herself once or twice, her folks got worried and sent her over to Iowa to visit some relations. Ever since she's come back she's been perfectly cheerful, and she says she's contented to live and work in a world that's so big and interesting. She said that anything as big as the bridges over the Platte and the Missouri reconciled her. And it's what goes on in the world that reconciles me.
 * Part II, Ch. 4

 * The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.
 * Part II, Ch. 4

 * I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
 * Part II, Ch. 8

 * There was about Alexandra something of the impervious calm of the fatalist, always disconcerting to very young people, who cannot feel that the heart lives at all unless it is still at the mercy of storms; unless its strings can scream to the touch of pain.
 * Part IV, Chapter 1 : "The White Mulberry Tree"

 * 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.
 * Part IV, Ch. 5

 * 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.
 * Part V, Ch. 3

The Song of the Lark (1915)

 * I tell you there is no such thing as creative hate!
 * Part I, Ch. 9

 * Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.
 * Part I, Ch. 11

 * Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer.
 * Part II, Ch. 3

 * All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.
 * Part II, Ch. 6

 * The great pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone, murmurs alone, thinks alone. They do not intrude upon each other. The Navajos are not much in the habit of giving or of asking help. Their language is not a communicative one, and they never attempt an interchange of personality in speech. Over their forests there is the same inexorable reserve. Each tree has its exalted power to bear.
 * Part IV, ch. 1

 * What was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself — life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?
 * Part IV, Ch. 3
 * Sometimes paraphrased: What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself — life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.

 * When we look back, the only things we cherish are those which in some way met our original want; the desire which formed in us in early youth, undirected, and of its own accord.
 * Part VI, Ch. 2

 * I keep my mind on it. That's the whole trick, in so far as stage experience goes; keeping right there every second. If I think of anything else for a flash, I'm gone, done for. But at the same time, one can take things in — with another part of your brain, maybe. It's different from what you get in study, more practical and conclusive. There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm. You learn the delivery of a part only before an audience.
 * Thea, in Part VI, Ch. 7

 * If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate! A contempt that drives you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever knew you could be.
 * Part VI, Ch. 9

 * Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.
 * Part VI, Ch. 11

My Antonia (1918)

 * There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.
 * Book I, Ch. 1

 * I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.
 * Book I, Ch. 2

 * I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now.
 * Book 1, Ch. 17

 * Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.
 * Book II, Ch. 7

 * On starlight nights I used to pace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side, with their storm-windows and covered back porches. They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed to me made up of evasions and negations; shifts to save cooking, to save washing and cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue of gossip. This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny. People's speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark.
 * Book II, Ch. 12

 * There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share — black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.
 * Book II, Ch. 14

 * "Jim," she said earnestly, "if I was put down there in the middle of the night, I could find my way all over that little town; and along the river to the next town, where my grandmother lived. My feet remember all the little paths through the woods, and where the big roots stick out to trip you. I ain't never forgot my own country."
 * Book II, Ch. 14

 * Cleric said he thought Virgil, when he was dying at Brindisi, must have remembered that passage. After he had faced the bitter fact that he was to leave the 'Aeneid' unfinished, and had decreed that the great canvas, crowded with figures of gods and men, should be burned rather than survive him unperfected, then his mind must have gone back to the perfect utterance of the 'Georgics,' where the pen was fitted to the matter as the plough is to the furrow; and he must have said to himself, with the thankfulness of a good man, 'I was the first to bring the Muse into my country.'
 * Book III, Ch. 2

 * Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.
 * Book III, Ch. 4

 * She remembered home as a place where there were always too many children, a cross man and work piling up around a sick woman.
 * Book III, Ch. 4

 * The windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every tree and sandbank and rugged draw. I found that I remembered the conformation of the land as one remembers the modelling of human faces.
 * Book IV, Ch. 3

 * I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of the world. I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister — anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me.
 * Book IV, Ch. 4

 * Ain't it wonderful, Jim, how much people can mean to each other?
 * Bok IV, Ch. 4

 * As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world. In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there.
 * Book IV, Ch. 4

 * In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
 * Book V, Ch. 1

 * As I confronted her, the changes grew less apparent to me, her identity stronger. She was there, in the full vigour of her personality, battered but not diminished, looking at me, speaking to me in the husky, breathy voice I remembered so well.
 * Book V, Ch. 1

 * It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.
 * Book V, Ch. 1

 * Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.
 * Book V, Ch. 3

The Professor's House (1925)

 * His misfortune was that he loved youth — he was weak to it, it kindled him. If there was one eager eye, one doubting, critical mind, one lively curiosity in a whole lecture-room full of commonplace boys and girls, he was its servant. That ardour could command him. It hadn't worn out with years, this responsiveness, any more than the magnetic currents wear out; it had nothing to do with Time.
 * Book I, Ch. 1

 * Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.
 * Book I, Ch. 1

 * The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free.
 * Book I, Ch. 1
 * The Professor's thoughts on Lake Michigan

 * A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.
 * Book I, Ch. 4

 * Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.
 * Book I, Ch. 5

 * The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.
 * Book I, Ch. 8

 * To people off alone, as we were, there is something stirring about finding evidences of human labour and care in the soil of an empty country. It comes to you as a sort of message, makes you feel differently about the ground you walk over every day.
 * Book II, Ch. 2

 * He had never learned to live without delight. And he would have to learn to, just as, in a Prohibition country, he supposed he would have to learn to live without sherry. Theoretically he knew that life is possible, maybe even pleasant, without joy, without passionate griefs. But it had never occurred to him that he might have to live like that.
 * Book III, Ch. 4

 * "In great misfortunes," he told himself, "people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love — if once one has ever fallen in." Falling out, for him, seemed to mean falling out of all domestic and social relations, out of his place in the human family, indeed.
 * Book III, Ch. 4

Katherine Mansfield (1925)
Essay, originally published in The Borzoi 1925 (1925)

 * The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysis that makes him first-rate.

 * 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, though they are not down in the list of subjects from which the conventional novelist works.

My Mortal Enemy (1926)

 * Now everything was in ruins. The air was still and cold like the air in a refrigerating-room. What I felt was fear; I was afraid to look or speak or move. Everything about me seemed evil. When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck; we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless.
 * Part I, Ch. 6

 * Only the stupid and the phlegmatic should teach.
 * Part II, Ch. 1

 * 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.
 * Part II, Ch. 4

 * Religion is different from everything else; because in religion seeking is finding.

 * In other searchings it might be the object of the quest that brought satisfaction, or it might be something incidental that one got on the way; but in religion, desire was fulfilment, it was the seeking itself that rewarded.

 * I could bear to suffer... so many have suffered. But why must it be like this? I have not deserved it. I have been true in friendship; I have faithfully nursed others in sickness... Why must I die like this, alone with my mortal enemy?
 * Part II, Ch. 5

Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)

 * That irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.
 * Book I, Ch. 3

 * Where there is great love there are always miracles.
 * Book I, Ch. 4

 * 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.
 * Book I, Ch. 4

 * The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still, — and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one's feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!
 * Book VII, Ch. 4

 * Father Latour judged that, just as it was the white man's way to assert himself in any landscape, to change it, make it over a little (at least to leave some mark of memorial of his sojourn), it was the Indian's way to pass through a country without disturbing anything; to pass and leave no trace, like fish through the water, or birds through the air. It was the Indian manner to vanish into the landscape, not to stand out against it. The Hopi villages that were set upon rock mesas were made to look like the rock on which they sat, were imperceptible at a distance.
 * Book VII, Ch. 4

 * In New Mexico he always awoke a young man...Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up to him for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests... That air would disappear from the whole earth in time, perhaps; but long after his day. He did not know just when it had become so necessary to him, but he had come back to die in exile for the sake of it. Something soft and wild and free, something that whispered to the ear on the pillow, lightened the heart, softly, softly picked the lock, slid the bolts, and released the prisoned spirit of man into the wind, into the blue and gold, into the morning, into the morning!
 * Book IX, Ch. 3

Not Under Forty (1936)

 * Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there — that, one might say, is created. It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named, of the overtone divined by the ear but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or the drama, as well as to poetry itself.
 * "The Novel Démeublé"; originally published in ''The New Republic (1922)

 * The higher processes are all processes of simplification. The novelist must learn to write, and then he must unlearn it; just as the modern painter learns to draw, and then learns when utterly to disregard his accomplishment, when to subordinate it to a higher and truer effect.
 * "The Novel Démeublé"

 * There is a popular superstition that "realism" asserts itself in the cataloguing of a great number of material objects, in explaining mechanical processes, the methods of operating manufactories and trades, and in minutely and unsparingly describing physical sensations. But is not realism, more than it is anything else, an attitude of mind on the part of the writer toward his material, a vague indication of the sympathy and candour with which he accepts, rather than chooses, his theme?
 * "The Novel Démeublé"

 * 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.
 * "Miss Jewett"; originally published as the Preface to The Best Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett (1925)

 * One might say that every fine story must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure; a cadence, a quality of voice that is exclusively the writer's own, individual, unique. A quality which one can remember without the volume at hand, can experience over and over again in the mind but can never absolutely define, as one can experience in memory a melody, or the summer perfume of a garden... It is a common fallacy that a writer, if he is talented enough, can achieve this poignant quality by improving upon his subject-matter, by using his "imagination" upon it and twisting it to suit his purpose. The truth is that by such a process (which is not imaginative at all!) he can at best produce only a brilliant sham, which, like a badly built and pretentious house, looks poor and shabby after a few years. If he achieves anything noble, anything enduring, it must be by giving himself absolutely to his material. And this gift of sympathy is his great gift; is the fine thing in him that alone can make his work fine. The artist spends a lifetime in pursuing the things that haunt him, in having his mind "teased" by them, in trying to get these conceptions down on paper exactly as they are to him and not in conventional poses supposed to reveal their character; trying this method and that, as a painter tries different lightings and different attitudes with his subject to catch the one that presents it more suggestively than any other. And at the end of a lifetime he emerges with much that is more or less happy experimenting, and comparatively little that is the very flower of himself and his genius.
 * "Miss Jewett"

 * The "sayings" of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speech — it is a gift from heart to heart.
 * "Miss Jewett"

 * It is scarcely exaggeration to say that if one is not a little mad about Balzac at twenty, one will never live; and if at forty one can still take Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempre at Balzac's own estimate, one has lived in vain.
 * "A Chance Meeting"; first published in The Atlantic Monthly (1933)

 * The world is always full of brilliant youth which fades into grey and embittered middle age: the first flowering takes everything. The great men are those who have developed slowly, or who have been able to survive the glamour of their early florescence and to go on learning from life.
 * "Joseph and His Brothers"; first published in The Saturday Review of Literature (6 June 1936)

Willa Cather on Writing (1949)

 * Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole — so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader's consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page.
 * On the Art of Fiction"; originally published in The Borzoi 1920 (1920)

 * 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.
 * "On the Art of Fiction" (1920)

 * Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.
 * "Four Letters: Escapism" first published in Commonweal (17 April 1936)

 * The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter.
 * "Four Letters: Escapism" (1936)

 * Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.
 * "Four Letters: Escapism" (1936)

 * Nearly all the Escapists in the long past have managed their own budget and their social relations so unsuccessfully that I wouldn't want them for my landlords, or my bankers, or my neighbors. They were valuable, like powerful stimulants, only when they were left out of the social and industrial routine.
 * "Four Letters: Escapism" (1936)

 * 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.
 * "Light on Adobe Walls"

 * Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all — no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself — a game of make-believe, or re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it.
 * "Light on Adobe Walls"

Willa Cather in Europe (1956)

 * Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.
 * Ch. 4 (16 July 1902)

 * If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don't care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations.
 * Ch. 5 (22 July 1902)

 * We were at last in Monte Cristo's country, fairly into the country of the fabulous, where extravagance ceases to exist because everything is extravagant, and where the wildest dreams come true.
 * Ch. 12 (6 September 1902) near Marseilles, France.

 * One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere, and hold fast to the days, as to fortune or fame.
 * Ch. 13 (10 September 1902)

 * What a thing it is to lie there all day in the fine breeze, with the pine needles dropping on one, only to return to the hotel at night so hungry that the dinner, however homely, is a fete, and the menu finer reading than the best poetry in the world! Yet we are to leave all this for the glare and blaze of Nice and Monte Carlo; which is proof enough that one cannot become really acclimated to happiness. (10 September 1902) in the village of Cavalaire, France.
 * Ch. 13

 * I am sure I do not know why the beauty of Monte Carlo should not satisfy more than it does. The bluest of all seas is nowhere bluer than when you see it between the marble balustrades of the long white terrace before the casino, palms are nowhere greener than in that high garden which the mountain screen from every unkind breath, no colours could be more rich and various than those of the red and purple Alps that tower up behind the town, on whose summit such violent thunderstorms gather and break. But for me, at least, there was not at all the pleasure I had anticipated in this dazzling white and blue, these feathery palms and ragged Alps. ...I had a continual restless feeling that there was nothing at all real about Monte Carlo; that the sea was too blue to be wet, the casino too white to be anything but pasteboard, and that from their very greenness the palms must be cotton. … in atmosphere and spirit the entire kingdom of Monaco is an extension of the casino.
 * Ch. 14 (16 September 1902)

 * From the time the Englishman's bones harden into bones at all, he makes his skeleton a flagstaff, and he early plants his feet like one who is to walk the world and the decks of all the seas. (16 September 1902)
 * Ch. 14

Quotes about Cather

 * Jim Burden, the narrator of Willa Cather's My Ántonia, says of the Nebraska prairie to which he has moved from Virginia that "trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons." He adds, "It must have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny landscape that made detail so precious." Burden is speaking of the American frontier at the end of the nineteenth century, but his words ring true for a prairie dweller one hundred years later.
 * Kathleen Norris "Dreaming of Trees" anthologized in The Sweet Breathing of Plants: Women Writing on the Green World edited by Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson (2001)

 * The most sensuous of writers, Willa Cather builds her imagined world almost as solidly as our five senses build the universe around us.
 * Rebecca West, "The Classic Artist", in James Schroeter, (ed.) Willa Cather and Her Critics, Cornell University Press, 1976.

title: Willa Cather