Katherine Anne Porter Quotes

Evil changes everybody!

Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human.

Hell lies at the bottom of the human heart.

Who isn't fascinated by evil?

The world is increasing in wickedness.

When the soul, through its own fault... becomes rooted in a pool of pitch-black, evil smelling water, it produces nothing but misery and filth.

I'm interested in villainy.

Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.

I do believe quite strongly in evil.

… a sewer with all the depravity of the human race.

… the most depraved wretches on earth.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is evil in this world.

Goodness is weakness, pleasantness is poisonous, serenity is mediocrity and kindness is for losers. The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts – and let’s face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field – is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by almost anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good.

There are souls which, crab-like, crawl continually toward darkness, going back in life rather than advancing in it, using what experience they have to increase their deformity, growing worse without ceasing, and becoming steeped more and more thoroughly in an intensifying wickedness.

Let us confess it: evil strides the world.

Sin in a wicked man is like poison in a serpent; it is in its natural place.

I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.

Some people show evil as a great racehorse shows breeding. They have the dignity of a hard chancre.

Unholy soldier, disciple of sin, what kind of mind are you living in?

The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.

Allow the purity of evil to guide you.

That which is evil is soon learned.

There is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust.

Evil is often supposed to be without rhyme or reason.

It is so stupid of modern civilisation to have given up believing in the devil when he is the only explanation of it.