My Ántonia Quotes
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Source: My Ántonia
Author: Willa Cather
Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.
Context
This line is from the novel My Ántonia, written by Willa Cather (1918).
The book may be called My Ántonia, but if you go around calling her yours, you'd better be ready for a fight. This book is about a man named Jim and an immigrant girl named Antonia, whom he sees as a symbol of the American West. She’s like the original manic pixie dream girl.
At the end of the book, Jim realizes that Antonia isn’t a concept, she’s a person. Are we sure Willa Cather wrote this and not John Green?
Even though Jim acknowledges her person-ness, with Antonia around he is also able to find beauty in looking back at the “incommunicable past.” So that's probably nice for Jim.
Where you've heard it
You hear this if you’re talking to a memoirist who is having a really hard time writing his book.
Pretentious Factor
If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.
Because this quote is from a guy who is writing a memoir, yet is talking about the “incommunicable past,” it kind of makes our head hurt, so it might be pretentious. Use with caution, especially if you’re writing your memoir.