Katherine Anne Porter Quotes

I was always an artist. I was a broker to earn a living, but I was always thinking about my art.

It is not from choice that my life is music and nothing more, but when one is an artist what else can he be? When a whole lifetime is too short to attain the heights he wants to reach, how then can he devote any of the little time he has to things outside of his art?

The life of an artist is like the life of a monk, a lewd monk if you like, very Rabelaisian. It is an ordination.

Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.

All artists are self-sacrificing human beings, and to become an artist is nothing but to devote oneself to the subterranean gods.

There are lives lived for love, and lives lived for art. We, happy band, have chosen the later persuasion.

The person who practices an art is an artist, not a samurai, and one should have the intention of being called a samurai.

I always find it fascinating to ask people, why they've chosen to live their life as an artist? Why be an actor, a singer, an author, a filmmaker? I've heard such inspiring answers to that question.

It is not right for painters to think that painting is like prostitution, that 'first you do it for love, then you do it for others, and finally you do it for money.

It was Richepin who said somewhere, 'The love of art means loss of real love'... True, but on the other hand, real love makes you disgusted with art.

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly?

An artist is born like a priest is born. If they are born an artist, I would tell them art is not a game: it is something very serious which completely requires everything you have to give.

Art without accomplishment becomes a form of faith, sustained more by the intensity of its common practice than by the pleasure it gives to its adherents in private.

Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.

The art is more important than the artist. The work is more important than the person who does it. You must be prepared to sacrifice all the you could possibly have, be, or do; you must be willing to go all the way for your art. If it is a question between choosing between your life and a work of art -- any work of art -- your decision is made for you.

Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

If anything in your life is more important than writing - anything at all - you should walk away now while you still can. Forewarned is forearmed. For those who cannot or will not walk away, you need only to remember this. Writing is life. Breathe deeply of it.

You stand your ground and you perform your art. That's what the artist does. The artist is about perfection.

An artist might be attracted to hedonism, but of course an artist is not a hedonist. He's a worker, always.

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

An artist who dedicates his life to art, burdens his art with his life, and his life with his art.

There's obviously always danger in making music or art for art's sake. Even as Christians we can be guilty of that, being more about the art than the Artist who gave us this gift.

A life lived for art, is never a life wasted.