Read Katherine Anne Porter biography
The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's owneven
more, one's own, for that has been put in our
care and we are responsible for its well- being.
1962 Ship of Fools, pt.3. |
Oh, poor Pearl Buck! She has no more bounce than a boiled potato.
Katherine Anne PorterMiracles are instantaneous, they cannot be summoned, but come of themeselves, usually at unlikely moments and to those who least expect them.
Katherine Anne PorterMost peoplewon't realizethat writing isa craft.You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.
Katherine Anne PorterThe pimple on the face of American literature.
Katherine Anne PorterThe human heart is not yet so corroded that it can read off the extinction of these two men without a shock to the very roots of its belief in justice and humanity.
Katherine Anne PorterThe road to death is a long march beset with all evils, and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter resistance and to what end? The barriers sink one by one, and no covering of the eyes shuts out the landscape of disaster, nor the sight of crimes committed there.
Katherine Anne PorterThey had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.
Katherine Anne PorterThe real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own — even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.
Katherine Anne PorterI finished the thing; but I think I sprained my soul.
Katherine Anne PorterI'm not afraid of life and I'm not afraid of death: Dying's the bore.
Katherine Anne PorterI have no patience with this dreadful idea that whatever you have in you has to come out, that you can't suppress true talent. People can be destroyed; they can be bent, distorted, and completely crippled . . . In spite of all the poetry, all the philosophy to the contrary, we are not really masters of our fate.
Katherine Anne Porter