176 Quotes by Katherine Anne Porter

The nose is surely one of the most impressionable, if not positively erotic, of all our unruly members.

The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own.

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.

I look upon literature as an art, and I believe that if you misuse it or abuse it, it will leave you. It is not a thing that you can nail down and use as you want. You have to let it use you, too.

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

All the old houses that I knew when I was a child were full of books, bought generation after generation by members of the family. Nobody told you to read this or not to read that.

Life comes first, an art not rooted in human experience is not worth a damn, but different kinds of minds have different kinds of experience, and all I ask of any man is validity; and there should be place for every type and kind of mind.

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.