Mary Karr Quotes - Page 3

Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver.

I think we fall in love and become adults and become citizens in a way by writing stories about ourselves.

I kept the fingers of my left hand crossed all the time, while on my right-hand fingers I counted anything at all—steps to the refrigerator, seconds on the clock, words in a sentence—to keep my head occupied. The counting felt like something to hang on to, as if finding the right numbers might somehow crack the code on whatever system ran the slippery universe we were moving through.

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.

Im always terrified when Im writing.

Mother’s particular devils had remained mysterious to me for decades. So had her past. Few born liars ever intentionally embark in truth’s direction, even those who believe that such a journey might axiomatically set them free.

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.

When you do try to picture the boys who do ask you out, they're absolutely featureless, like old carvings eroded by centuries of rain and wind.

I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities.

I get about five memoirs per week in my mailbox, and few of them inspire anything but a desire to pick up the channel changer.

As a memoirist, I strive for veracity.

Age about 30, I stopped looking up my books in bookstores. Paying attention to the marketplace isn't a healthy thing for me.

I've never contended that I had a really horrible life.

He never gave up on me, I only stopped being matriculated.

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 bring you plates of stuff--get undercut by having to play football.

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

Nobody sounds good writing about your divorce, let's face it.

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