Katherine Anne Porter

Love is a state in which one lives who loves, and whoever loves has given himself away; love then, and not marriage, is belonging.

In spite of all the poetry, all the philosophy to the contrary, we are not really masters of our fate.

You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.

Anarchy had been here all the nineteenth century, with its sinister offspring Nihilism, and 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.

There is the frightful possibility in all such trials as these that the judgment has already been pronounced and the trial is just a mask for murder.

They left a great heritage of love, devotion, faith, and courage — all done with the sure intention that holy Anarchy should be glorified through their sacrifice and that the time would come that no human being should be humiliated or be made abject.

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.

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.