“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.”

— Willa Cather , book O Pioneers!

Part IV, Ch. 5
O Pioneers! (1913)

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Willa Cather 99

American writer and novelist 1873–1947

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