# Quote — Willa Cather, Not Under Forty

> There is a popular superstition that "realism" asserts itself in the cataloguing of a great number of material objects, in explaining mechanical processes, the methods of operating manufactories and trades, and in minutely and unsparingly describing physical sensations. But is not realism, more than it is anything else, an attitude of mind on the part of the writer toward his material, a vague indication of the sympathy and candour with which he accepts, rather than chooses, his theme?

- Author: [Willa Cather](https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather.md)
- Book: [Not Under Forty](https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/not-under-forty.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Willa_Cather#Not_Under_Forty_(1936)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/not-under-forty/there-is-a-popular

## More from this book

> The world is always full of brilliant youth which fades into grey and embittered middle age: the first flowering takes everything. The great men are those who have developed slowly, or who have been able to survive the glamour of their early florescence and to go on learning from life.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/not-under-forty/the-world-is-always.md)

> Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there — that, one might say, is created. It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named, of the overtone divined by the ear but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or the drama, as well as to poetry itself.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/not-under-forty/whatever-is-felt.md)

> The higher processes are all processes of simplification. The novelist must learn to write, and then he must unlearn it; just as the modern painter learns to draw, and then learns when utterly to disregard his accomplishment, when to subordinate it to a higher and truer effect.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/willa-cather/not-under-forty/the-higher-processes.md)