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" 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

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

" 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. "

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

Mary Karr

Problem

Media

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Mary Karr

Always

Astonished

" Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it. "

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

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

Mary Karr

Even

Myself

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

" Nobody sounds good writing about your divorce, let's face it. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" As a memoirist, I strive for veracity. "

Mary Karr

Veracity

Strive

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

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "