The first night he slept with her, he took a washrag and a…

I do have a really good memory. I mean, like, I can remember all the phone numbers of everybody on the street I grew…

— Mary Karr

Ninety percent of what's wrong with you could be cured with a hot bath, says God from the bowels of the subway. but we…

— Mary Karr

I always say that a poet loves the world, and the prose writer needs to create an alternative world.

— Mary Karr

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

— Mary Karr

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

— Mary Karr

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…

— Mary Karr

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

— Mary Karr

“Then it hits me. I’m actually kneeling before a toilet. The throne, as other drunks call it. How many drunken nights and slungover mornings…

— Mary Karr

“I think about the story of Job I heard in Carol Sharp's Sunday school. How he sort of learned to lean into feeling hurt…

— Mary Karr

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…

— Mary Karr

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

— 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 clothes and…

— Mary Karr

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

— Mary Karr

It turned out to be impossible for me to 'run away' in the sense other American teenagers did. Any movement at all was taken…

— 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