Katherine Anne Porter
Journalist
1890-05-15
Quotes by Katherine Anne Porter
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Marriage is a public declaration of a man and a woman that they have formed a secret alliance, with theintention to belong to, and share witheach other, a mystical estate; mysticalexactly in the sense that the realexperience cannot be communicated toothers, nor explained even to oneselfon rational grounds.
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It is my conviction that when events are forgotten, buried in the cellar of the page, they are no longer even history.
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It is a simple truth that the human mind can face better the most oppressive government, the most rigid restrictions, than the awful prospect of a lawless, frontierless world. Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity; it brings out the old raiding, oppressing, murderous instincts; the rage for revenge, for power, the lust for bloodshed. The longing for freedom takes the form of crushing the enemy- there is always the enemy!- into the earth; and where and who is the enemy if there is no visible establishment to attack, to destroy with blood and fire? Remember all that oratory when freedom is threatened again. Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty.
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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.
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Death always leaves one singer to mourn.
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Marriage is a public declaration of a man and a woman that they have formed a secret alliance, with theintention to belong to, and share witheach other, a mystical estate; mysticalexactly in the sense that the realexperience cannot be communicated toothers, nor explained even to oneselfon rational grounds.
Read 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.
Read quote -
Death always leaves one singer to mourn.
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It is my conviction that when events are forgotten, buried in the cellar of the page, they are no longer even history.
Read quote -
It is a simple truth that the human mind can face better the most oppressive government, the most rigid restrictions, than the awful prospect of a lawless, frontierless world. Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity; it brings out the old raiding, oppressing, murderous instincts; the rage for revenge, for power, the lust for bloodshed. The longing for freedom takes the form of crushing the enemy- there is always the enemy!- into the earth; and where and who is the enemy if there is no visible establishment to attack, to destroy with blood and fire? Remember all that oratory when freedom is threatened again. Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty.
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I have not much interest in anyone's personal history after the tenth year, not even my own. Whatever one was going to be was all prepared before that.
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I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.
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Physical infidelity is the signal, the notice given, that all fidelities are undermined.
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The 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.
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Every young artist has to do it one way, his way, and the hell with patterns. Remember who you are and where you are and what you're doing. Nobody else can do anything for you and you really wouldn't want them to anyway. And never take advice, including this.
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We do not run from the troubles and dangers that are truly ours, and it is better to learn what they are earlier than later, and if we don't run from the others, we are fools.
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Mexican writer and diplomat, Pasado en claro (A Draft of Shadows) You learn something the day you die. You learn how to die.
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... the kitchen, where all the fair prospects of life were centered.
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I don't see no reason to hold it against a man because he went loony once or twice in his lifetime ...
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How I have loved this house in the morning before we are all awake and tangled together like badly cast fishing lines.
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