“(“No man but a blockhead ever wrote for any cause but money,” Samuel Johnson said.)” — Mary Karr Blockhead Copy Share Image
“Born on third base, my daddy always said of the well off, and they think they hit a home run.” — Mary Karr Baseball Copy Share Image
I always say that a poet loves the world, and the prose writer needs to create an alternative world. — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
The thing I have to do as a writer, and that God permits me to do, is that I have to be… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
There are all kinds of things God wants me to do that I'm very obstreperous about. — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
Memoir is not an act of history, but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt. — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
I get about five memoirs per week in my mailbox, and few of them inspire anything but a desire to pick up… — Mary Karr Desire Copy Share Image
“The trick in that town was getting through a night at all without stalling in the sludge of your own thoughts.” — Mary Karr Night Copy Share Image
Writing about prayer to a secular audience is tap-dancing on the radio. I want to say, 'Gee whiz, isn't this great,' and… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You're three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you… — Mary Karr Attention Copy Share Image
Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
I believe in God, but even if you don't, you can believe in a self, the person who is innately who you… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
“Every day I feel more like some defeated matador limping out of the arena after I've been gored, or like some general… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
If you lie to your husband - even about something so banal as how much you drink - each lie is a… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
“I've plumb forgot where I am for the instant, which is how a good lie should take you. At the same time,… — Mary Karr Lies Copy Share Image
“Any time you try to collapse the distance between your delusions about the past and what really happened, there is suffering involved."… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“(Later, I'l learn that's the structure of an elegy: lament, consolation; bad news, followed by good news.)” — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
The failures of other genres to provide an emotional connection with some of their characters and narratives gives memoir a toehold. — Mary Karr Character Copy Share Image
Having a great dad probably permitted me to pal around with guys in a way that some women don't. — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
There are women succeeding beyond their wildest dreams because of their sobriety. — Mary Karr Dream Copy Share Image
Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver. — Mary Karr Children Copy Share Image
Your heart, Mary Karr, he'd say. His pen touched my sternum, and it felt for all the world like the point of… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
“The first night he slept with her, he took a washrag and a jug of wood alcohol to get rid of her… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
I've been teaching classes on memoirs since 1986, and I've been reading them all my life, and I think that I would… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
People who didn't live pre-Internet can't grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. I stopped in the middle of… — Mary Karr Art Copy Share Image
It turned out to be impossible for me to 'run away' in the sense other American teenagers did. Any movement at all… — Mary Karr Adolescence Copy Share Image
I'd spent way more years worrying about how to look like a poet -- buying black clothes, smearing on scarlet lipstick, languidly… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
Ninety percent of what's wrong with you could be cured with a hot bath, says God from the bowels of the subway.… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else's suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing… — Mary Karr Body Copy Share Image
The emotional stakes a memoirist bets with could not be higher, and it's physically enervating. I nap on a daily basis like… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
“At some point the talk got heated, and Paolo called Mother a strumpet, for which Daddy was said to have stomped a… — Mary Karr Parenting Copy Share Image
Reading is socially accepted disassociation. You flip a switch and you’re not there anymore. It’s better than heroin. More effective and cheaper… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
When people suffer, their relationships usually suffer as well. Period. And we all suffer because, as the Buddha says, that's the nature… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
For days on end, I avoid the Web, never logging in until about two or three, after I've written all morning. On… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
I have a completely addictive personality. Diet Coke is my last - God, I know people counting days off Diet Coke; I'm… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
“Then the game became guessing where the storm would hit, or, in local parlance, “go in,” as if it were some stray… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
When I got sober, I thought giving up was saying goodbye to all the fun and all the sparkle, and it turned… — Mary Karr Fun Copy Share Image
There's a space at the bottom of an exhale, a little hitch between taking in and letting out that's a perfect zero… — Mary Karr Copy Share Image
