# Quote — Willa Cather, My Mortal Enemy

> 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.

- Author: [Willa Cather](https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather.md)
- Book: [My Mortal Enemy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/my-mortal-enemy.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Willa_Cather#My_Mortal_Enemy_(1926)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/my-mortal-enemy/people-can-be-lovers

## More from this book

> Only the stupid and the phlegmatic should teach.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/my-mortal-enemy/only-the-stupid.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/my-mortal-enemy/now-everything-was.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/my-mortal-enemy/in-other-searchings.md)