Jesse Y.

“You have not known what you are--you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life;
Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time;
What you have done returns already in mockeries;
Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?
The mockeries are not you;
Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.”
― Willa Cather

“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.”
― Willa Cather

“The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor. ”
― Willa Cather