Katherine Anne Porter Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Beauty, Real, Abuse

  1962 Ship of Fools, pt.3.

  12 Copy quote

• You can't write about people out of textbooks, and you can't use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Children, Writing, Years

  Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.94, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  10 Copy quote

• Life is a game of piquet played in a bramble bush in very bad weather.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Games, Weather, Life Is

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.277, Atlantic Monthly Press

  4 Copy quote

• There seems to be a kind of order in the universe…in the movement of the stars and the turning of the Earth and the changing of the seasons. But human life is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own right and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Stars, Order, Feelings

  Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.97, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  10 Copy quote

• Your mind outwears all sorts of things you may set your heart upon; you can enjoy it when all other things are taken away.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Taken, Heart, Mind

  Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.270, Library of America

  7 Copy quote

• [Marriage] is the merciless revealer, the great white searchlight turned on the darkest places of human nature.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  White, Human Nature, Humans

  Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.945, Library of America

  5 Copy quote

• What we need is endless courage.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Needs, Endless

  8 Copy quote

• The greatest art comes out of warmth and conviction and deep feeling, but then, very few people, even geniuses, have all that.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Art, People, Feelings

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.6, Atlantic Monthly Press

  7 Copy quote

• Grant that the idea of God is the most splendid single act of the creative human imagination, and that all his multiple faces and attributes correspond to some need and satisfy some deep desire in mankind; still, for the Inquirers, it is impossible not to conclude that this mystical concept has been harnessed rudely to machinery of the most mundane sort, and has been made to serve the ends of an organization which, ruling under divine guidance, has ruled very little better, and in some respects, worse, than certain rather mediocre but frankly manmade systems of government.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Divine Guidance, Government, Organization

  Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.719, Library of America

  5 Copy quote

• Art is a vocation, as much as anything in this world. For the real artist, it is the most natural thing in the world, not as necessary as air and water, perhaps, but as food and water. But we really do lead almost a monastic life, you know; to follow it you very often have to give up something.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Art, Giving Up, Real

  Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.86, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  5 Copy quote

• All working, practical political systems, even those professing to originate in moral grandeur, are based upon and operate by contempt of human life and the individual fate.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Fate, Political, Politics

  Katherine Anne Porter, Darlene Harbour Unrue (2008). “Collected stories and other writings”

  5 Copy quote

• There are so many things that we are capable of, that we could be or do. The potentialities are so great that we never, any of us, are more than one-fourth fulfilled.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Action, Fulfilled, Fourth

  Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.85, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  7 Copy quote

• Death cancels our engagements, but it does not affect the consequences of our acts in life.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Doe, Engagement, Consequence

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.83, Atlantic Monthly Press

  6 Copy quote

• God does not know whether a skin is black or white, He sees only souls.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  White, Soul, Black

  Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.423, Library of America

  10 Copy quote

• The thing is not to follow a pattern. Follow your own pattern of feeling and thought. The thing is to accept your own life and not try to live someone else's life. Look, the thumbprint is not like any other, and the thumbprint is what you must go by.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Feelings, Individuality, Trying

  Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.86, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  12 Copy quote

• Religion put claws on Aunt Sally and gave her a post to whet them on.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Aunt, Claws, Posts

  Katherine Anne Porter (2014). “Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Three Short Novels: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.26, Library of America

  6 Copy quote

• Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Freedom, People, Dangerous

  Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.991, Library of America

  9 Copy quote

• Love is purely a creation of the human imagination, it is merely perhaps the most important of all the examples of how the imagination continually outruns the creature it inhabits.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Love Is, Imagination, Important

  "Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings".

  8 Copy quote

• Two-thirds of my energies go in trying to save one-third for work.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Two, Trying, Energy

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.116, Atlantic Monthly Press

  10 Copy quote

• But my belief is growing that our political and social evils are remediable, if only all of us who want a change for the better just get up and work for it, all the time, with as much knowledge and intelligence as we can muster for it. Half the wrongs of human life exist because of the inertia of people who simply will not use their energies in fighting for what they believe in. And finally the wrongs roll up into world catastrophes and millions of deaths and a terrible set-back for all mankind.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Believe, Fighting, People

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.291, Atlantic Monthly Press

  6 Copy quote

• A story is like something you wind out of yourself. Like a spider, it is a web you weave, and you love your story like a child.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Children, Wind, Spiders

  14 Copy quote

• There has been a marvelous joyous carnival of mourning for Edith Piaf and Jean Coctaeau, and it was real! They died as they had lived, with style and grace and their proper eccentricity; and Paris loves anybody who can live anarchically and be delightful entertainment at the same time. So do I.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Real, Paris, Mourning

  5 Copy quote

• who wants to read about success? It is the early struggle which makes a good story.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Success, Struggle, Stories

  Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.685, Library of America

  9 Copy quote

• It's a man's world, and you men can have it.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Men, World

  17 Copy quote

• It is such a relief to be told the truth.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Relief

  Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.980, Library of America

  16 Copy quote

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