List of Katherine Anne Porter Quotes

I Work Whenever I'm Let.

No Man Can Be Explained By His Personal History, Least Of All A Poet.

[on Gertrude Stein's Making Of Americans:] I Doubt If All The People Who Should Read It Will Read It For A Great While Yet, For It Is In Such A Limited Edition, And Reading It Is Anyhow A Sort Of Permanent Occupation.

I Always Write A Story In One Sitting.

Eventually Women Will Learn There's No Such Thing As Freedom. Their Husbands Are Just As Fastened To The Deck As They Are. Men Get Onto A Treadmill And Never Got Off.

I'm Not Afraid Of Life And I'm Not Afraid Of Death: Dying's The Bore.

The 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.

Physical Infidelity Is The Signal, The Notice Given, That All Fidelities Are Undermined.

I Was Always Restless, Always A Roving Spirit. When I Was A Little Child I Was Always Running Away. I Never Got Very Far, But They Were Always Having To Come And Fetch Me. Once When I Was About Six, My Father Came To Get Me Somewhere I'd Gone, And He Told Me Later He'd Asked Me, "why Are You So Restless? Why Can't You Stay Here With Us?" And I Said To Him, "i Want To Go And See The World. I Want To Know The World Like The Palm Of My Hand.

Untrained Minds Have Always Been A Nuisance To The Military Police Of Orthodoxy. God-intoxicated Mystics And Untidy Saints With Only A White Blaze Of Divine Love Where Their Minds Should Have Been, Are Perpetually Creating Almost As Much Disorder Within The Law As Outside It.

Mexican Writer And Diplomat, "pasado En Claro" ("a Draft Of Shadows") You Learn Something The Day You Die. You Learn How To Die.

I 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.