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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.

Katherine Anne Porter

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Katherine Anne Porter
Age: 90 †
Born: 1890
Born: May 15
Died: 1980
Died: September 18
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Indian Creek
Texas
Books
Bought
Child
Generation
Read
Members
Family
Generations
House
Nobody
Book
Told
Children
Knew
Full
Houses

More quotes by Katherine Anne Porter

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Education must be taken out of the hands of rich illiterates, third rate politicians, and put where it belongs: in the care of scholars. At present the whole University system is rotten to the core, and an appalling waste of time, energy and money.
Katherine Anne Porter
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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.
Katherine Anne Porter
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. . . all that she had had, and all that she had missed, were lost together, and were twice lost in this landslide of remembered losses.
Katherine Anne Porter
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Love must be learned again and again... Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked.
Katherine Anne Porter
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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
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Life is a game of piquet played in a bramble bush in very bad weather.
Katherine Anne Porter
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A novel is really like a symphony where instrument after instrument has to come in at its own time, and no other.
Katherine Anne Porter
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We are born knowing death.
Katherine Anne Porter
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The greatest art comes out of warmth and conviction and deep feeling, but then, very few people, even geniuses, have all that.
Katherine Anne Porter
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Perhaps the habit which distinguishes civilized people from others is that of discussion, exchange of opinion and ideas, the ability to differ without quarrelling, to say what you have to say civilly and then to listen civilly to another speaker.
Katherine Anne Porter
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The past is never where you think you left it.
Katherine Anne Porter
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It is my firm belief that all our lives we are preparing to be somebody or something, even if we don't do it consciously. And the time comes one morning when you wake up and find that you have become irrevocably what you were preparing all this time to be.
Katherine Anne Porter
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I do not understand the world, but I watch it's progress.
Katherine Anne Porter
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With the most infinite tenderness I have ever known in my life, he put his arms around me, gently, gently, and I embraced him around the neck, and we touched.
Katherine Anne Porter
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The nose is surely one of the most impressionable, if not positively erotic, of all our unruly members.
Katherine Anne Porter
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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.
Katherine Anne Porter
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Physical infidelity is the signal, the notice given, that all fidelities are undermined.
Katherine Anne Porter
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Adventure is something you seek for pleasure, or even for profit, like a gold rush or invading a country...but experience is what really happens to you in the long run the truth that finally overtakes you.
Katherine Anne Porter
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I've been called a stylist until I really could tear my hair out. And I simply don't believe in style. The style is you.
Katherine Anne Porter
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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