Katherine Anne Porter Quotes

Quotes about:

• The past is never where you think you left it.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Past, Thinking, Left

  Katherine Anne Porter (2015). “Ship of Fools: A Novel”, p.123, Open Road Media

  73 Copy quote

• All life worth living is difficult, nobody promised us happiness; it is not a commodity you have earned, or shall ever earn. It is a by-product of brave living, and it never comes in the form we expect, or at the season we hoped for, or as the result of our planning for it.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Brave, Planning, Commodity

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.204, Atlantic Monthly Press

  30 Copy quote

• Each generation must get on the same old merry-go-round, only disguised in a fresh coat of paint.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Generations, Coats, Paint

  21 Copy quote

• First impressions are often signals from the deep that we should credit oftener than we do.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  First Impression, Credit, Firsts

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.250, Atlantic Monthly Press

  9 Copy quote

• If we say I love you, it may be received with doubt, for there are times when it is hard to believe. Say I hate you, and the one spoken to believes it instantly, once for all. ... Love must be learned, and learned again and again; there is no end to it. Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Hate, Believe, Love You

  38 Copy quote

• Perhaps the habit which distinguishes civilized people from others is that of discussion, exchange of opinion and ideas, the ability to differ without quarrelling, to say what you have to say civilly and then to listen civilly to another speaker.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Ideas, People, Opinion

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.205, Atlantic Monthly Press

  28 Copy quote

• You shouldn't side-step suffering if you have to go through it to get where you're going.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Suffering

  "Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations".

  24 Copy quote

• Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Freedom, Liberty, Remember

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

  5 Copy quote

• I always knew one thing, that life is made bearable and possible and liveable by the relations of one human being to another, the individual love and gentleness between persons, or in any case, the unbreakable bond that grows and fastens lives together in all sorts of mysterious ways.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Together, Unbreakable Bonds, Way

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.592, Atlantic Monthly Press

  6 Copy quote

• I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Trying, Fiction, Telling The Truth

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

  20 Copy quote

• Trust your happiness and the richness of your life at this moment. It is as true and as much yours as anything else that ever happened to you.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Moments, Richness, Happened

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.468, Atlantic Monthly Press

  22 Copy quote

• The arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and the societies, even the very civilization that produced them. They cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Art, Reality, Government

  "Flowering Judas". "Flowering Judas" by Katherine Anne Porter, The Modern Library, 1940.

  19 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 now is endless courage.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Needs, Endless

  23 Copy quote

• Love must be learned again and again... Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Hate, Waiting, Needs

  Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.939, Library of America

  14 Copy quote

• 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

• I will never again attempt to tell any young person what to do - the really gifted don't need advice and the others can't take it.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Advice, Needs, Young

  Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.119, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  8 Copy quote

• Be respectful of words. They mean something.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Mean, Respectful, Be Respectful

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.274, Atlantic Monthly Press

  11 Copy quote

• It is my firm belief that all our lives we are preparing to be somebody or something, even if we don't do it consciously. And the time comes one morning when you wake up and find that you have become irrevocably what you were preparing all this time to be.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Morning, Wake Up, Belief

  Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.84, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  28 Copy quote

• If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last lines, my last paragraph first, and then I go back and work towards it. I know where I'm going. I know what my goal is. And how I get there is God's grace.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Writing, Goal, Grace

  Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  32 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

• Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Life, Artist, Giving

  Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  25 Copy quote

• Civilization, let me tell you what it is. First the soldier, then the merchant, then the priest, then the lawyer. The merchant hires the soldier and priest to conquer the country for him. First the soldier, he is a murderer; then the priest, he is a liar; then the merchant, he is a thief; and they all bring in the lawyer to make their laws and defend their deeds, and there you have your civilization!

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Country, Liars, Law

  Katherine Anne Porter (2015). “Ship of Fools: A Novel”, p.126, Open Road Media

  24 Copy quote

• The very thing about people that makes the human race interesting is also the thing that makes it so hard to get anything done without the most horrible confusions: no two people think exactly the same way about anything.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Thinking, Race, Two

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.283, 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

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