1. In Webster County, Nebraska, the prairie *rolls in waves*, following the contours of a tableland gouged by rivers and creeks.  连绵起伏

2. When I was last there, in June, the sky was a *blaring blue* and the hills were a *murmur of greens*. The air was hot and heavy enough that thoughts evaporated from my mind.

3. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be *dissolved into* something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.  Willa Cather

4. There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened.  Willa Cather

5. She said she’d live her whole life the same way again, even with all its *tribulations*, because that’s the way the Lord wanted it to be.  (Suffering)

6. The transfer west came as an enormous shock: Cather felt as if she had been *cast out of civilization*. “It was a kind of erasure of personality,” she later said.

7. By 1870, however, he had left the college and *established a pattern of* being unwilling or unable to stay in one place for any length of time.

8. She had thought of studying science or medicine, but her *command of prose pulled her toward writing.*

9. Cather was a mercurial but brilliant critic, veering between *ecstatic raves* and *brutal takedowns*. The takedowns were disconcerting to performers who came to town expecting a *docile press.*