Katherine Anne Porter Quotes

In the writing, I'm just trying to go deeper, emotionally, and learn more about myself and reveal more and find a way to connect with people in new ways.

One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.

I have this theory that anything that happens to you that leaves you alive and intact can be used somewhere in your writing.

As far as writing, it's grown because I've really grown comfortable with who I am.

I want to get within myself and write. I really, really want to write.

Don't worry about writing a book or getting famous or making money. Just lead an interesting life.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

You've got to live life to write a book about it.

I didn't really get serious about my own writing until I was convinced it was something that I wanted to do, that I wanted to spend that much time alone.

In order to get new things to rap about, you've gotta live.

Each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of the words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record.

We are living in a world where the individual must learn to command the raw materials of expression. He must not be dependent all the time on the ready-made, the finished product. It's the transferring, the changing of the raw into what is the expression of your own self – the whole joy and satisfaction and frustration of life is built into this.

We never write anything with themes. We just write the same rubbish all the time.

Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.

Follow your heart, and your pleasure in art. Don’t do what you think is going to be making you money, or what you’re parents want you to do, or what that beautiful girl or guy thinks you should be doing. Do what you love. It’s going to lead to where you want to go. Go out there and make the world more beautiful. I know you can.

When I write, I make discoveries about my feelings.

Your vivid, exciting companionship in the office must not be your audience, you must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.

I think a diversity of expression can only be good, so I think the more that people write about their experience, use their imagination to deal with their experience, you know, I think that's going to be good for not only for those authors but also for people who are interested in trying to understand it.

Write what you would love to read. Finish what you begin to write. Your voice is uniquely yours and we are all waiting to hear it.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

It's what I wanted to do with my life. Not necessarily just direct Jim Carrey movies, but to direct and act and write and create and along the way discover what it is that I'm about.