Katherine Anne Porter Quotes about Art

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The arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment,

The arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and the societies, even the very civilization that produced them. They cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away.

Katherine Anne Porter

Art, Reality, Government

"Flowering Judas". "Flowering Judas" by Katherine Anne Porter, The Modern Library, 1940.

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

Art, People, Feelings

Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.6, Atlantic Monthly Press

Art is a vocation, as much as anything in this world. For the real artist, it is the most natural thing in the world, not as necessary as air and water, perhaps, but as food and water. But we really do lead almost a monastic life, you know; to follow it you very often have to give up something.

Katherine Anne Porter

Art, Giving Up, Real

Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.86, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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.

Katherine Anne Porter

Art, Men, Mind

Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.34, Atlantic Monthly Press

In the arts, you simply cannot secure your bread and your freedom of action too. You cannot be a hostile critic of society and expect society to feed you regularly.

Katherine Anne Porter

Art, Bread, Action

Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.840, Library of America

I think joy is just as instructive as pain, and I like it better. I never meant to suffer any more than I could help; my nature was meant for happiness, a daylight art and living.

Katherine Anne Porter

Art, Pain, Thinking

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.

Katherine Anne Porter

Art, Believe, Abuse

Katherine Anne Porter, Joan Givner (1987). “Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations”, p.98, Univ. Press of Mississippi