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

Mary Karr

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Mary Karr
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 16
Historian
Poet
Writer
Groves
Texas
Best
Even
Time
Bastards
Least
Part

More quotes by Mary Karr

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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.
Mary Karr
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There are women succeeding beyond their wildest dreams because of their sobriety.
Mary Karr
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Nobody sounds good writing about your divorce, let's face it.
Mary Karr
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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.
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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.
Mary Karr
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I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities.
Mary Karr
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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
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Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver.
Mary Karr
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Sure the world breeds monsters, but kindness grows just as wild.
Mary Karr
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The shreiking fight or the out-of-character insult endures forever, while the daily sweetness dissolves like sugar in water.
Mary Karr
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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 want magic, to win the lottery we never bought a ticket for.
Mary Karr
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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
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I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years.
Mary Karr
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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
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Love is the only passion which includes in its dreams the happiness of someone else.
Mary Karr
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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
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I'm not nearly smart enough or imaginative enough to tackle the novel form. Never happen.
Mary Karr
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As a memoirist, I strive for veracity.
Mary Karr
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For me, everything's too much and nothing's enough.
Mary Karr
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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