What does the sentence mean in the given context:"It takes hold of you, or it leaves you perfectly cold.

She once said:"When people ask me if writing has been a hard or easy road I always answer with the famous saying, "the end is nothing; the road is all. ' That is what I mean when I say writing has been a pleasure. I have never faced the type-writer(???) with the thought that one more task had to be done. "

Like most writers, Willa Cather did not write books for the money that they brought her, but rather for the pleasure that came in their writing. Her works were, like her, simple and full of the vigor of her days in Nebraska, where she grew from childhood to young womanhood and where she developed a deep love for the treeless land of the Great Plains with its wild flowers, wheat fields and rivers.

"It' s a rather strange thing about the flat country," she wrote later. "It takes hold of you, or it leaves you perfectly cold. A great many people find it very dull; they like a church tower, an old factory, a waterfall, country all made to look like a German, Christmas card... But when I come to the open plains, something happens. I'm home. I breathe differently. "