“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.”

—  Willa Cather

"A Chance Meeting"; first published in The Atlantic Monthly (1933)
Not Under Forty (1936)

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Willa Cather99
American writer and novelist 1873–1947

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