I'd spent way more years worrying about how to look like a poet -- buying black clothes, smearing on scarlet lipstick, languidly draping myself over thrift-store furniture -- than I had learning how to assemble words in some discernible order. Mary Karr More Quotes by Mary Karr More Quotes From Mary Karr A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it. Mary Karr thanksgiving-day dysfunctional-family family Sure the world breeds monsters, but kindness grows just as wild. Mary Karr kindness monsters life Gary Shteyngart has written a memoir for the ages. I spat laughter on the first page and closed the last with wet eyes. Un-put-down-able in the day and a half I spent reading it, Little Failure is a window into immigrant agony and ambition, Jewish angst, and anybody's desperate need for a tribe. Readers who've fallen for Shteyngart's antics on the page will relish the trademark humor. But here it's laden and leavened with a deep, consequential, psychological journey. Brave and unflinching, Little Failure is his best book to date Mary Karr laughter reading book That’s what’s so gorgeous about humanity. It doesn’t matter how bleak our daily lives are, we still fight for the light. I think that’s our divinity. We lean into love, even in the most hideous circumstances. We manage to hope. Mary Karr fighting light thinking Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards. Mary Karr part-time Faith is a choice like any other. If you're picking a career or a husband - or deciding whether to have a baby - there are feelings and reasons pro and con out the wazoo. But thinking it through is - at the final hour - horse dookey. You can only try out. Mary Karr family faith baby 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. Mary Karr sympathy inspirational book If dysfunction means that a family doesn't work, then every family ambles into some arena in which that happens, where relationships get strained or even break down entirely. We fail each other or disappoint each other. That goes for parents, siblings, kids, marriage partners - the whole enchilada. Mary Karr sibling mean kids Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody's head off. Mary Karr air blow hands 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. Mary Karr blessed self believe Reading is socially accepted disassociation. You flip a switch and you’re not there anymore. It’s better than heroin. More effective and cheaper and legal. Mary Karr heroin flip reading There's a space at the bottom of an exhale, a little hitch between taking in and letting out that's a perfect zero you can go into. There's a rest point between the heart muscle's close and open - an instant of keenest living when you're momentarily dead. You can rest there. Mary Karr zero space heart The words and sentences you take into your body from books are no less sacred and healing than communion. Surely at least one such person lives in your zip code. Mary Karr body healing book If you live in the dark a long time and the sun comes out, you do not cross into it whistling. There's an initial uprush of relief at first, then-for me, anyway- a profound dislocation. My old assumptions about how the world works are buried, yet my new ones aren't yet operational.There's been a death of sorts, but without a few days in hell, no resurrection is possible. Mary Karr dark profound long Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon. Mary Karr moon loss morning I always say that a poet loves the world, and the prose writer needs to create an alternative world. Mary Karr alternatives world needs In my godless household, poems were the closest we came to sacred speech -- the only prayers said. Mary Karr sacred speech prayer Every now and then we enter the presence of the numinous and deduce for an instant how we're formed, in what detail the force that infuses every petal might specifically run through us, wishing only to lure us into our full potential. Mary Karr full-potential wish running I find a great deal of comfort and care in my faith and prayer. I'd sooner do without air than prayer. Mary Karr prayer air comfort How much smaller the large places are once we're grown up, when we have car keys and credit cards. Mary Karr credit car keys
