The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter

God does not know whether a skin is black or white, He sees only souls.

The thought of him was a smoky cloud from hell that moved and crept in her head.

[From Flowering Judas] She is, her comrades tell her, full of romantic error, for what she defines as cynicism in them is merely 'a developed sense of reality'.

[From Old Mortality] The woman in the picture. . . was only a ghost in a frame, and a sad, pretty story from old times.

[From Old Mortality] ...religion put claws on Aunt Sally and gave her a post to whet them on.

[From The Old Order] The Grandmother always treated her animal friends as if they were human beings temporarily metamorphosed . . .

[From The Jilting of Granny Weatherall] You waste life when you waste good food.

[From Pale Horse, Pale Rider] The road to death is a long march beset with all evils. . .

She wished to sit down quietly and wait for her death, but not until she had cut the throats of her man and that girl who were laughing and kissing under the cornstalks.