Koren Zailckas

I think, for one, we have to really accept that anger is a normal human emotion that can be a positive force…

— Koren Zailckas

But lately, when I’m drunk, I feel a hostility that I’ve never known before. It is a tension deep in my gut…

— Koren Zailckas

Reading Poe was like a near-death experience, the kind that makes you feel fragile and free in its wake. I felt almost…

— Koren Zailckas

I don't know where the idea originated that memoir writing is cathartic. For me, it's always felt like playing my own neurosurgeon,…

— Koren Zailckas

My parents always swore that in my childhood they had to let me win at board games. If, by the lucky stroke…

— Koren Zailckas

I think what I learned in research is that as Americans, we're very distrustful of anger. We're not sure if we should…

— Koren Zailckas

“I'm trying to figure out precisely which character flaw might be responsible for my latest life failure.”

— Koren Zailckas

“i feel like the squirrels that so often run in front of our car & then stand paralyzed in the forward crunch…

— Koren Zailckas

As long as we depend on other women for self-esteem, using them as bad examples or fantasy versions - special, powerful -…

— Koren Zailckas

I do think anger is so difficult for women. Girls think it undermines their femininity; it's not very ladylike.

— Koren Zailckas

My demeanor isn't that of a woman enraged. To see me slumped, glassy-eyed, holding a sandwich someone has cut for me into…

— Koren Zailckas

“Sometimes the very loved ones who seem to be causing all our problems are just calling attention to deeper issues the rest…

— Koren Zailckas

“That's the thing about social drinking: In the end, it's the drinking that creates the scene, not the other way around. You…

— Koren Zailckas

There's a limit to my patience with anything that smacks of metaphysics. I squirm at the mention of "mind expansion" or "warm…

— Koren Zailckas

America, ever the narcissistic mother, prefers baby bumps to children and expectant mothers to full-fledged bum-and-nose-wiping ones.

— Koren Zailckas

It's no wonder the narcissistic mother will always have a place in literature: she's a freak of nature.

— Koren Zailckas

“By the same token, I think it's time that we allow ourselves to experience real anger as women. And I don't mean…

— Koren Zailckas

I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing…

— Koren Zailckas

I think statistics go in one ear and out the other. All of us respond to stories more than numbers.

— Koren Zailckas

I’ve been thinking I’d like to be Daisy; I’d like to have someone like Gatsby stare at my house for whole years…

— Koren Zailckas

I once heard someone say that the concept of moderation seems a little extreme, and tonight...I agree.

— Koren Zailckas

I can’t help thinking about memoir as a down-and-up process: Dive down for color; come up for context. Sink back down for…

— Koren Zailckas

“So apparently all homeschooled kids spoke like pretentious liberal arts college students.”

— Koren Zailckas

We are taught to believe it's bad to be angry, or at least it's not good. That's not the case all throughout…

— Koren Zailckas

“And narcissists don’t love themselves. They hardly have any selves to begin with. They put all their energy into the fake image…

— Koren Zailckas