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" 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. "

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" 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

" 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. "

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

" Having a great dad probably permitted me to pal around with guys in a way that some women don't. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

Looking

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" It's completely through prayer that I came to believe in God. I just sensed a presence south of my neck. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" I think the problem with visual media like TV is that they're reductive. "

Mary Karr

Problem

Media

" 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. "

" I'm not nearly smart enough or imaginative enough to tackle the novel form. Never happen. "

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

Mary Karr

Even

Myself

" The failures of other genres to provide an emotional connection with some of their characters and narratives gives memoir a toehold. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" As a memoirist, I strive for veracity. "

Mary Karr

Veracity

Strive