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" As a memoirist, I strive for veracity. "
Mary Karr
Veracity
Strive
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" Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else's suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a community with others. "
Mary Karr
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" For days on end, I avoid the Web, never logging in until about two or three, after I've written all morning. On a good week, I don't go online till after Wednesday, so four or five days might lapse without my checking e-mail. "
Mary Karr
Good
Never
Morning
" If dysfunction means that a family doesn't work, then every family ambles into some arena in which that happens, where relationships get strained or even break down entirely. We fail each other or disappoint each other. That goes for parents, siblings, kids, marriage partners - the whole enchilada. "
Mary Karr
Family
Marriage
Down
" On a piece of prose, you have to work at least six hours a day. I don't know how you can do that and teach and raise a kid and paint the house. "
Mary Karr
Teach
You
Work
" I find a great deal of comfort and care in my faith and prayer. I'd sooner do without air than prayer. "
Mary Karr
Prayer
Air
Care
" Both my parents were agnostic. My mother was kind of a Buddhist. She had some spiritual tendencies, but they were kind of flaky - New Agey, you know? Which is partly why I'm suspicious of that sort of thing. I'm skeptical of any spiritual practice that doesn't involve other people and doesn't involve some sort of consistent tradition. "
Mary Karr
People
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Spiritual
" The failures of other genres to provide an emotional connection with some of their characters and narratives gives memoir a toehold. "
Mary Karr
Connection
Memoir
Emotional
" The thing I have to do as a writer, and that God permits me to do, is that I have to be willing to fail. "
Mary Karr
Writer
Fail
God
" People who didn't live pre-Internet can't grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. The only bookstores sold Bibles the size of coffee tables and dashboard Virgin Marys that glowed in the dark. "
Mary Karr
Live
People
Dark
" Prose cannot compete with the economy of poetry, the ability to have a full artistic experience in a short period of time. "
Mary Karr
Economy
Experience
Poetry
" I get about five memoirs per week in my mailbox, and few of them inspire anything but a desire to pick up the channel changer. "
Mary Karr
Anything
Week
Up
" Writing about prayer to a secular audience is tap-dancing on the radio. I want to say, 'Gee whiz, isn't this great,' and have everyone's head cocked like the RCA dog. "
Mary Karr
Great
Prayer
Say
" I've been teaching classes on memoirs since 1986, and I've been reading them all my life, and I think that I would like to write a critical book that might have some of those how-to elements in it. "
Mary Karr
Think
Reading
My Life
" I've never contended that I had a really horrible life. "
Mary Karr
Really
Life
Never
" It's completely through prayer that I came to believe in God. I just sensed a presence south of my neck. "
Mary Karr
God
Presence
Prayer
" I think being tortured as a virtue is a kind of antiquated sense of what it is to be an artist. It comes out of that Symbolist idea, back to Rimbaud and all that disordering of the senses and all of that being some exalted state. When I've been that way, I've always been less exalted than I would have liked. "
Mary Karr
Virtue
Way
Artist
" Nobody sounds good writing about your divorce, let's face it. "
Mary Karr
Face
Nobody
Writing
" There are women succeeding beyond their wildest dreams because of their sobriety. "
Mary Karr
Women
Sobriety
Dreams
" Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You're three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down. "
Mary Karr
Childhood
Control
Feet
" I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities. "
Mary Karr
Tell
People
Writing
" I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years. "
Mary Karr
Success
Years
Overnight Success
" I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate, and I'm just an arrogant little thing. It's hard for me to admit that I can't understand something, let alone not be in charge of it. "
Mary Karr
Admit
Understand
Alone
" The truth is when I went to graduate school I would've said I was among the least talented of the students, I was certainly the least smart, or less educated. But I worked very hard. "
Mary Karr
Said
School
Smart
" My idea of art is, you write something that makes people feel so strongly that they get some conviction about who they want to be or what they want to do. It's morally useful not in a political way, but it makes your heart bigger; it's emotionally and spiritually empowering. "
Mary Karr
Feel
Political
Art
" Success has affected my self-definition in that I have more money. Writers pooh-pooh that idea, but it's a huge deal. "
Mary Karr
Success
More
Money
" When I got sober, I thought giving up was saying goodbye to all the fun and all the sparkle, and it turned out to be just the opposite. That's when the sparkle started for me. "
Mary Karr
Thought
Fun
Goodbye
" I believe in God, but even if you don't, you can believe in a self, the person who is innately who you are. Once you fully become that person, then everything you do will be blessed. "
Mary Karr
Self
Believe
Blessed
" I think the problem with visual media like TV is that they're reductive. "
Mary Karr
Like
Problem
Media
" Having a great dad probably permitted me to pal around with guys in a way that some women don't. "
Mary Karr
Women
Great
Having
" I have a completely addictive personality. Diet Coke is my last - God, I know people counting days off Diet Coke; I'm such a Diet Cokehead. Now I won't let myself buy it. "
Mary Karr
Personality
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