Mary Karr

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

— Mary Karr

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

— Mary Karr

Sure the world breeds monsters, but kindness grows just as wild...

— Mary Karr

Im always terrified when Im writing.

— Mary Karr

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

— Mary Karr

A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.

— Mary Karr

A pool game mixes ritual with geometry.

— Mary Karr

Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards.

— Mary Karr

“The changes are coming fast and blind now, and in your skull sits an hourglass with a grain size hole through which…

— Mary Karr

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

— Mary Karr

I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities.

— Mary Karr

“What hurts so bad about youth isn't the actual butt whippings the world delivers. It's the stupid hopes playacting like certainties.”

— Mary Karr

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

— Mary Karr

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

On a piece of prose, you have to work at least six hours a day. I don't know how you can do…

— Mary Karr

Love is the only passion which includes in its dreams the happiness of someone else.

— Mary Karr

“I believe that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the…

— Mary Karr

“Which ensures that life gets lived in miniature. In lieu of the large feelings—sorrow, fury, joy—I had their junior counterparts—anxiety, irritation, excitement.…

— Mary Karr

It strikes me that whatever advantages there are to being a boy--getting to stay out late and having other people wash your…

— Mary Karr

But I'm not ready to stop listening to the screwed-up inner voice that's been ordering me around for a lifetime. My head…

— Mary Karr

The truth is when I went to graduate school I would've said I was among the least talented of the students, I…

— Mary Karr

“We are in the grip of some big machine grinding us along. The force of it simplifies everything. A weird calm settled…

— Mary Karr

“No matter how self-aware you are, memoir wrenches at your insides precisely because it makes you battle with your very self –…

— Mary Karr

“But most of the time, we keep memories packed away. I sometimes liken that moment of sudden unpacking to circus clowns pouring…

— Mary Karr

The voice of God does not pander, offers no five-year plan, no long-term solution, nary an edict. It is small & fond…

— Mary Karr

“Before that summer, I had many times heard long-winded Baptist preachers take ten minutes to pray over card tables of potato salad…

— Mary Karr

“But the boys' bicycle pack also sent a stab of envy through me. If I couldn't yet capture John Cleary with my…

— Mary Karr

Both my parents were agnostic. My mother was kind of a Buddhist. She had some spiritual tendencies, but they were kind of…

— Mary Karr

If you live in the dark a long time and the sun comes out, you do not cross into it whistling. There's…

— Mary Karr

“After Mother got her picture, we all stood around the fire truck eating moon-shaped cookies dusted with powdered sugar that the mayor's…

— Mary Karr

If dysfunction means that a family doesn't work, then every family ambles into some arena in which that happens, where relationships get…

— Mary Karr

“And Meredith says that reminds her of a Camus novel, the one about the plague, and she tells the story of it,…

— Mary Karr

“That bar also delineated the realm of sweat and hourly wage, the working world that college was educating me to leave. Rewards…

— Mary Karr

The Lesson You've Got to learn is the someday you'll someday stagger to, blinking in cold light, all tears shed, ready to…

— Mary Karr

“At the Sound of the Gunshot, Leave A Message That's what my friend spoke into his grim machine the winter he first…

— Mary Karr

“I liked to call myself a poet and had affected a habit of reading classical texts (in translation, of course – I…

— Mary Karr

“I’ve said it’s hard. Here’s how hard: everybody I know who wades deep enough into memory’s waters drowns a little. Between chapters…

— Mary Karr

“But whether you’re a memoirist or not, there’s a psychic cost for lopping yourself off from the past: it may continue to…

— Mary Karr

He never gave up on me, I only stopped being matriculated.

— Mary Karr

For me, everything's too much and nothing's enough.

— Mary Karr