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" I always thought my family was so bizarre, so when people started coming up to me and saying, 'My family was exactly like yours,' I was completely knocked out. "

Mary Karr

Family

Thought

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" There are all kinds of things God wants me to do that I'm very obstreperous about. "

" 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. "

" Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself. "

" I'm always terrified when I'm writing. "

" I find a great deal of comfort and care in my faith and prayer. I'd sooner do without air than prayer. "

" I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years. "

" 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. "

" I've never contended that I had a really horrible life. "

" I don't think I look like the pope's favorite Catholic - at least not under close scrutiny. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" As a memoirist, I strive for veracity. "

Mary Karr

Veracity

Strive

" Most of the people I write about I'm still in touch with, so I would be loath to make up stuff about them. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There are women succeeding beyond their wildest dreams because of their sobriety. "

" Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it. "

" I don't have a copy of my books, and the degree to which I never read them is profound. I never look. "

" I do have a really good memory. I mean, like, I can remember all the phone numbers of everybody on the street I grew up on. "

" The audiobooks I buy are never first-time reads - only rereadings of books I know well that I find intoxicating. "

" 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. "

" I'm always astonished by the confidence my readers put in me. "

Mary Karr

Always

Astonished

" Poetry privileges music and is aesthetically more challenging. Prose privileges information and is emotionally more challenging. "

" I think we fall in love and become adults and become citizens in a way by writing stories about ourselves. "

" 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. "

" I'm doomed to act like myself, even when it's inconvenient! "

Mary Karr

Even

Myself

" When people suffer, their relationships usually suffer as well. Period. And we all suffer because, as the Buddha says, that's the nature of being human and wanting stuff we don't always get. "

" 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. "

" 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. "