Katherine anne porter quote

All life worth living is difficult, nobody promised us happiness; it is not a commodity you have earned, or shall ever earn. It is a by-product of brave living, and it never comes in the form we expect, or at the season we hoped for, or as the result of our planning for it. The past is never where you think you left it. Each generation must get on the same old merry-go-round, only disguised in a fresh coat of paint.

Katherine Anne Porter.

If we say I love you, it may be received with doubt, for there are times when it is hard to believe. Say I hate you, and the one spoken to believes it instantly, once for all. Love must be learned, and learned again and again; there is no end to it. Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked. First impressions are often signals from the deep that we should credit oftener than we do.

“Trust your happiness and the richness of your life at this moment.

Perhaps the habit which distinguishes civilized people from others is that of discussion, exchange of opinion and ideas, the ability to differ without quarrelling, to say what you have to say civilly and then to listen civilly to another speaker. You shouldn't side-step suffering if you have to go through it to get where you're going. I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.

Trust your happiness and the richness of your life at this moment. It is as true and as much yours as anything else that ever happened to you. Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty.