Most people won't realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else. Katherine Anne Porter More Quotes by Katherine Anne Porter More Quotes From Katherine Anne Porter 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. Katherine Anne Porter biographiespersonal-historyyears You are right, none of us live enough, and sometimes I think it is because we mistake hurrah and hullabaloo for experience, we get a sock in the eye and think it is a broken heart. Katherine Anne Porter eyemistakeheart I don't believe in intuition. When you get sudden flashes of perception, it is just the brain working faster than usual. But you've been getting ready to know it for a long time, and when it comes, you feel you've known it always. Katherine Anne Porter perceptionlongbelieve In this moment she felt that she had been robbed of an enormous number of valuable things, whether material or intangible: things lost or broken by her own fault, things she had forgotten and left in houses when she moved: books borrowed from her and not returned, journeys she had planned and had not made, words she had waited to hear spoken to her and had not heard, and the words she meant to answer with. . . . Katherine Anne Porter journeylossbook Defeat in this world is no disgrace and that is what they cannot understand. If you really fought well and fought for the right thing. Katherine Anne Porter defeatfailureworld [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. Katherine Anne Porter readingdoubtpeople I am in Paris. Yes ma'am , I made it back. I came up from Berlin, stopped here ten days, fought a losing battle against my deepest inclinations, pulled myself out by the hair and went to Madrid...Madrid is a lovely enchanting city, and there was almost ready for me a kind of penthouse full of sunlight, a roof garden, and so on. I gave one look at it all, returned to the hotel and went to bed and wept bitterly for eleven hours...Why? Because I had seen Paris and could not endure the thought of being anywhere else. Katherine Anne Porter parisgardencities 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 mourningparisreal What we need is endless courage. Katherine Anne Porter endlessneeds I specialize in what the French call la petite histoire. I am interested in the individual thumbprint. Katherine Anne Porter petitethumbprintsindividual I started out with nothing in the world but a kind of passion, a driving desire. I don't know where it came from, and I don't know why - or why I have been so stubborn about it that nothing could deflect me. But this thing between me and my writing is the strongest bond I have ever had - stronger than any bond or any engagement with any human being or with any other work I've ever done. Katherine Anne Porter passiondesirewriting There are only a few bits of absolute knowledge in the world, people can learn only one or two fundamental facts about each other, the rest is decoration and prejudice. Katherine Anne Porter twopeopleknowledge Life is a game of piquet played in a bramble bush in very bad weather. Katherine Anne Porter life-isgamesweather There have been many times when I have been so entirely sickened of life it was very hard to work to keep on, a half dozen times I have been tempted to suicide, but I am glad I did not give way, for I have always felt that the last half of my life would somehow atone for the first half, and I still think it may ... It is not possible to live in this world without suffering unless one is a born stone. But it is also possible to have a great deal of happiness in spite of the suffering. Katherine Anne Porter suicidegivingthinking we do know now, all of us, that the most appalling cruelties are committed by apparently virtuous governments in expectation of a great good to come, never learning that the evil done now is the sure destroyer of the expected good. Katherine Anne Porter governmentexpectationsevil advance money is really a delusion, that is to say, I get no more until it is paid out in sales, but still, living from hand to mouth and day to day as I do, a nickel in the hand is more useful than the same nickel next year. What do I know about next year? I've never been there. I don't know any one who has. Katherine Anne Porter futurehandsyears Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty. Katherine Anne Porter libertyfreedomremember We have the bad habit, some of us, of looking back to a time - almost any time will do - when society was stable and orderly, family ties stronger and deeper, love more lasting and faithful, and so on. Let me be your Cassandra prophesying after the fact, and a long study of the documents in the case: it was never true, that is, no truer than it is now. Katherine Anne Porter familytiespast Mexican writer and diplomat, "Pasado en claro" ("A Draft of Shadows") You learn something the day you die. You learn how to die. Katherine Anne Porter mexicanshadowdeath 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-guidancegovernmentorganization
