-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. Her 1962 novel Ship of Fools
was the best-selling novel in America that year, but her short stories
received much more critical acclaim. She is known for her penetrating insight; her work deals with dark themes such as betrayal, death and the origin of human evil. In 1990, Recorded Texas Historic Landmark
number 2905 was placed in Brown County, Texas to honor the life and career of Porter.
Katherine Anne Porter, born as Callie Russell Porter in Indian Creek, Texas
, was the fourth of five children of Harrison Boone Porter and Alice (Jones) Porter.
The human heart is not yet so corroded that it can read off the extinction of these two men without a shock to the very roots of its belief in justice and humanity.
They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.
The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own — even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.
I finished the thing; but I think I sprained my soul.
I'm not afraid of life and I'm not afraid of death: Dying's the bore.
There seems to be a kind of order in the universe, in the movement of the stars and the turning of the earth and the changing of the seasons, and even in the cycle of human life. But human life itself is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own rights and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own.