Katherine Anne Porter Quotes

Pain is a byproduct of life. That’s the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That’s true for everyone. But if you don’t face the pain and the suck, you don’t ever get the other things either. Laughter. Joy. Love. Pain passes, but those things are worth fighting for. Worth dying for.

Suffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from such a life as bliss. It’s a great enhancer. It might last a minute, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a great space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed that I grew, and further defined my capacities – not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for contentment, friendship, or any other human experience.

Life's fairly excruciating. Painful things happen. Every now and then, you drag yourself out of the stream and stand on the bank gasping for air. I think that's how I work.

When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.

When I think of the happiness that is in store for me, every sorrow, every pain becomes dear to me.

I'm making a great effort because sometimes life is not enjoyable. Sometimes it's painful and sometimes it's stressful, sometimes it's agonizing even, so I think once you get around those humps: strive for pleasure and peace.

Joy came always after pain.

Don't give up. There are lessons to be learned even in the most horrendous pain. And you don't know that when you're young.

You're never given more pain than you can handle. You never, ever get more than you can take.

The path to joy leads through despair.

The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.

Trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment; there is no fate in the world so horrible as to have no share in either its joys or sorrows.

We are not strong enough to stand up against endless grief, And yet pain is the constant drone of life. So if we are to have any happiness at all, it is only in the passing instant.

In my life I've gone through a lot of really hard times. I went through depression and had so many challenges that I overcame. And I overcame because I just decided to be happy.

It takes far less courage to kill yourself than it takes to make yourself wake up one more time. It's harder to stay where you are than to get out. For everyone but you, that is.

People are too durable, that's their main trouble. They can do too much to themselves, they last too long.

If you know that life is basically going to be horrendously difficult, at best, and all but unlivable at worst, or possibly even unlivable, do you go on? And the choice to go on is the only thing that I think can be called hope. Because if hope isn't forced to encounter the worst possibility, then it's a lie.

Because nobody goes through life without a scar.

All this pain is going to come back and make me stronger.

I don't think one ever stops struggling.

Just know that all the pain that I've been through, it made me strong.

It was a really interesting thing to explore, the strength it takes for someone to stay when they truly do not want to be on this Earth anymore.

People go through so much in life - financially, physically, mentally, and emotionally. So I don't look at the ups and downs as anything but a negligible area.

It is tough: sometimes the pain that you feel makes you grow.

I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.