I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities. Mary Karr More Quotes by Mary Karr More Quotes From 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 degrees profound book We are in the grip of some big machine grinding us along. The force of it simplifies everything. A weird calm settled over me from inside out. What is about to happen has stood in line to happen. All the roads out of that instant have been closed, one by one. Mary Karr calm machines lines Nobody sounds good writing about your divorce, let's face it. Mary Karr divorce sound writing Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You’re three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down. Mary Karr feet kids moving The emotional stakes a memoirist bets with could not be higher, and it's physically enervating. I nap on a daily basis like a cross-country trucker. Mary Karr emotional naps country Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver. Mary Karr yankee-stadium writing children Having a great dad probably permitted me to pal around with guys in a way that some women don't. Mary Karr pals dad guy What I bring to the party is, I'm a big fan. Mary Karr living For days on end, I avoid the Web, never logging in until about two or three, after I've written all morning. On a good week, I don't go online till after Wednesday, so four or five days might lapse without my checking e-mail. Mary Karr end never good morning The audiobooks I buy are never first-time reads - only rereadings of books I know well that I find intoxicating. Mary Karr find only never know People who didn't live pre-Internet can't grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. The only bookstores sold Bibles the size of coffee tables and dashboard Virgin Marys that glowed in the dark. Mary Karr coffee dark life people Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself. Mary Karr escape yourself you style I think the problem with visual media like TV is that they're reductive. Mary Karr like think media problem I think being tortured as a virtue is a kind of antiquated sense of what it is to be an artist. It comes out of that Symbolist idea, back to Rimbaud and all that disordering of the senses and all of that being some exalted state. When I've been that way, I've always been less exalted than I would have liked. Mary Karr back think artist way I have a completely addictive personality. Diet Coke is my last - God, I know people counting days off Diet Coke; I'm such a Diet Cokehead. Now I won't let myself buy it. Mary Karr myself personality god people I've been teaching classes on memoirs since 1986, and I've been reading them all my life, and I think that I would like to write a critical book that might have some of those how-to elements in it. Mary Karr my-life reading life book Writing about prayer to a secular audience is tap-dancing on the radio. I want to say, 'Gee whiz, isn't this great,' and have everyone's head cocked like the RCA dog. Mary Karr great prayer dog writing There are all kinds of things God wants me to do that I'm very obstreperous about. Mary Karr about things me god Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it. Mary Karr poem every behind sixty I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate, and I'm just an arrogant little thing. It's hard for me to admit that I can't understand something, let alone not be in charge of it. Mary Karr alone understand me philosophy
