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" I'm not nearly smart enough or imaginative enough to tackle the novel form. Never happen. "
Mary Karr
Happen
Tackle
Smart
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" The emotional stakes a memoirist bets with could not be higher, and it's physically enervating. I nap on a daily basis like a cross-country trucker. "
Mary Karr
Nap
Daily
Emotional
" I'm doomed to act like myself, even when it's inconvenient! "
Mary Karr
Like
Even
Myself
" Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it. "
Mary Karr
Drafts
Every
Poem
" 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
" There are all kinds of things God wants me to do that I'm very obstreperous about. "
Mary Karr
Wants
About
God
" 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
" I'm always terrified when I'm writing. "
Mary Karr
Always
Terrified
Writing
" 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
" Nobody sounds good writing about your divorce, let's face it. "
Mary Karr
Face
Nobody
Writing
" 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
" I'm always astonished by the confidence my readers put in me. "
Mary Karr
Always
Astonished
Me
" 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
Suffering
Poetry
Passion
" 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 don't think I look like the pope's favorite Catholic - at least not under close scrutiny. "
Mary Karr
Catholic
Look
Think
" 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 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
" I think the problem with visual media like TV is that they're reductive. "
Mary Karr
Like
Problem
Media
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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'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
" 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
" 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
" Age about 30, I stopped looking up my books in bookstores. Paying attention to the marketplace isn't a healthy thing for me. "
Mary Karr
Attention
Me
Looking
" 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
Up
Thought
" 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