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" 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
Related Quotes:
" I think we fall in love and become adults and become citizens in a way by writing stories about ourselves. "
Mary Karr
Think
Become
Writing
" There are women succeeding beyond their wildest dreams because of their sobriety. "
Mary Karr
Women
Sobriety
Dreams
" Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it. "
Mary Karr
Drafts
Every
Poem
" 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
" 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
Know
Spiritual
" Poetry privileges music and is aesthetically more challenging. Prose privileges information and is emotionally more challenging. "
Mary Karr
Music
Poetry
Prose
" 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
" 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. "
Mary Karr
Street
Good
Memory
" 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
" I'm always terrified when I'm writing. "
Mary Karr
Always
Terrified
Writing
" I'm not nearly smart enough or imaginative enough to tackle the novel form. Never happen. "
Mary Karr
Happen
Tackle
Smart
" 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. "
Mary Karr
Relationships
People
Always
" 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
" As a memoirist, I strive for veracity. "
Mary Karr
Veracity
Strive
" 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
" 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 don't have a copy of my books, and the degree to which I never read them is profound. I never look. "
Mary Karr
Never
Look
Copy
" 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
People
Know
" 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 don't think I look like the pope's favorite Catholic - at least not under close scrutiny. "
Mary Karr
Catholic
Look
Think
" The audiobooks I buy are never first-time reads - only rereadings of books I know well that I find intoxicating. "
Mary Karr
Know
Books
Never
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Mary Karr
Trying
Style
Choose
" 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
" I'm always astonished by the confidence my readers put in me. "
Mary Karr
Always
Astonished
Me
" 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