Katherine Anne Porter's 1962 Ship of Fools was the best selling novel of the year and assured her financial security. She is generally more admired for her shorter works, however, such as Pale Horse, Pale Rider and her collections of short stories.

She lived at 75 Washington Place and her birthday is May 15.

Here are a couple of short passages by Porter, one bleak, the other less so, depending on how you look at it:

The road to death is a long march beset with all evils, and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter resistance and to what end? The barriers sink one by one, and no covering of the eyes shuts out the landscape of disaster, nor the sight of crimes committed there.

Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939)

Miracles are instantaneous, they cannot be summoned, but come of themselves, usually at unlikely moments and to those who least expect them.

Ship of Fools (1962) Pt. 3