Katherine Anne Porter Quotes

The more you own, the more you know you don't own.

We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.

I am what is mine. Personality is the original personal property.

My body parts are all I have left now that are only mine - the world owns everything else.

The more we have the less we own.

I suppose identity depends on memory. And if my memory is blotted out, then I wonder if I exist - I mean, if I am the same person. Of course, I don't have to solve that problem. It's up to God, if any.

Are you mine?” Yes. “Are you mine?” Yes. “Are you mine?” No. “No?” No. I loved being yours. But now I’m mine, which is all I ever was, in the end.

No one owns anything. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them. And if nothing belongs to me, then there's no point wasting my time looking after things that aren't mine.

Truly, whoever possesses little is that much less possessed: praised be a little poverty!

Adam didn't look at him when he said, finally, "It doesn't matter how you say it. It's what you wanted, in the end. All your things in one place, all under your roof. Everything you own right where you can see.

Let not a man's self be to him all in all.

Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?

He loved possessions, not masses of them, but a select few that he did not part with.They gave a man self-respect. Not ostentation but quality, and the love that cherished the quality. Possessions reminded him that he existed, and made him enjoy his existence. It was as simple as that. And wasn' t that worth something? He existed.

Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men?

I think and that is all that I am.

I see what happens when one gets very attached to material things. That's just not what my life is.

Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions.

I don't expect anybody to know who I am.

I don't like to attach myself to material things.

What we share with another ceases to be our own.

So how can you lose what you've never owned?

Sometimes it's better to look at things than own them... owning means anxiety and lots of bags to carry around.

I have never been interested in presenting myself.

I don't like possessions.