Katherine Anne Porter Quotes

Advice is such a tricky thing when you're young.

Sometimes it might seem like I'm using my songs to give other people pointers. But mainly, they're for me, just little notes to myself that I collected, and the wisdom that I've read. I give myself a lot of advice.

Whenever I mentor people and help them discover their purpose, I always encourage them to start the process by discovering their strengths, not exploring their shortcomings. Why? Because people's purpose in life is always connected to their giftedness. It always works that way. You are not called to do something that you have no talent for. You will discover your purpose by finding and remaining in your strength zone.

When you’re young, whatever you do that makes you stand out is a frightening thing. You learn later that that’s what you want to do, stand out.

When you’re young you just run, but you come back to what you need.

The most exciting place to discover talent is in yourself.

Most people who decide to grow personally find their first mentors in the pages of books.

Love is not everything ... It is only when we are young that we think it is.

Every talent must unfold itself in fighting.

I'm not so arrogant to think I'm the only guide someone needs ... but I might be the guide that someone needs.

Young girls come up to me all the time to ask for advice. They see me as a survivor.

For if the talent or individuality is there, it should be expressed. If it doesn't find its way out into the air, it can be turned inward and gnaw like the fox at the Spartan boy's belly.

Joe Wright was almost like a teacher, to be firm with me, that really stuck with me. And that helped me as I've gotten older.

I don't know, but I do think that everyone has a story to tell. The question is, can they find the voice and the confidence to tell it? We lack the encouragement as young people to believe this; we very often think that writing is for clever people, which it isn't.

Create your own path, hone your talent, be ready to show your talent, and don't doubt yourself.

When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.

I am a great believer in what we've been told time and time again by people like Joseph Campbell, "find your bliss." Find out what it is that touches you most deeply. Pursue it, learn about it, explore it, expand on it. Live with it and nurture it. Find your own way and make your own contribution. Find a way to make a contribution to this society because God knows we need contributions from the coming generation. This planet and this civilization is in need. I see it as a time of need.

People are experience-rich and theory-poor. I help people organize / make sense of their experiences.

People have a very limited idea of what being creative is - playing the guitar or the flute or writing poetry - so people go on writing rubbish in the name of poetry. You have to find out what you can do and what you cannot do. Everybody cannot do everything. You have to search and find your destiny. You have to grope in the dark, I know. It is not very clear-cut what your destiny is, but that's how life is. And it is good that one has to search for it - in the very search, something grows.

The only advice [for new writers and poets] I can offer is to be yourself: not the self someone else wants you to be, but the self you are. Enjoy yourself and your life. But most of all travel and eat. That's how we learn.

It is often to be observed, that as in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthly rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out ; so, in digging in one s soul for the fine gold of genius, much dulness and common-place is first brought to light. Happy would it be, if the man possessed in himself some receptacle for his own rubbish of this sort: but he is like the occupant of a dwelling, whose refuse cannot be clapped into his own cellar, but must be deposited in the street before his own door, for the public functionaries to take care of.

If the advice is simply to respect yourself and follow the path that you want to follow, that would be the best advice I could ever pass on.

The best advice I've ever received is, 'No one else knows what they're doing either.

Different mentors throughout my life have supported and guided me to remember that I do have the strength, courage and talent to do whatever I want to do.

But I get a thrill out of bringing a group together and helping them reach a place they didn’t know they could go. I see myself as a mentor now and I’m excited to lead some of these talented young guys.