{ "type": "quote", "site": { "name": "Leafy Quotes", "language": "en", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com" }, "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/my-antonia/on-starlight-nights", "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/my-antonia/on-starlight-nights.json", "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/my-antonia/on-starlight-nights.md", "id": "6864928c-2b0d-4e90-b560-93f4c877cd98", "slug": "on-starlight-nights", "text": "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.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Willa Cather", "slug": "willa-cather", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather" }, "book": { "title": "My Antonia", "slug": "my-antonia", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/my-antonia" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "conformity", "slug": "conformity", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/conformity" }, { "name": "gossip", "slug": "gossip", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/gossip" }, { "name": "everyday life", "slug": "everyday-life", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/everyday-life" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Willa_Cather#My_Antonia_(1918)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:02", "more_from_book": [ { "id": "d093db02-0c6a-4692-8a8a-db80aa928234", "slug": "men-are-all", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/my-antonia/men-are-all", "text": "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.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "marriage", "slug": "marriage", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/marriage" }, { "name": "independence", "slug": "independence", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/independence" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Willa_Cather#My_Antonia_(1918)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:03" }, { "id": "91ba5644-f077-4dab-a863-dc65697aee9d", "slug": "in-the-course", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/my-antonia/in-the-course", "text": "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.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "memory", "slug": "memory", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/memory" }, { "name": "illusions", "slug": "illusions", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/illusions" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Willa_Cather#My_Antonia_(1918)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:03" }, { "id": "5a38794d-8181-429f-ae9b-b8ec8e6bb07e", "slug": "the-windy-springs", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/my-antonia/the-windy-springs", "text": "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.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" }, { "name": "work", "slug": "work", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/work" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Willa_Cather#My_Antonia_(1918)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:42:03" } ] }