Quote

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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Mary Karr
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 16
Historian
Poet
Writer
Groves
Texas
Attention
Pick
Keen
Moving
Terror
Unemployed
Three
Picks
Terrifying
Kids
Childhood
Flat
People
Pay
Flats
Move
Tall
Feet
Awake
Snaps
Control
Broke
Illiterate

More quotes by Mary Karr

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I don't have a copy of my books, and the degree to which I never read them is profound. I never look.
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As a memoirist, I strive for veracity.
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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.
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Most great writers suffer and have no idea how good they are. Most bad writers are very confident. Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver, the bat girl in Yankee Stadium. That’s a more fruitful way to be.
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I've never contended that I had a really horrible life.
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I find a great deal of comfort and care in my faith and prayer. I'd sooner do without air than prayer.
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Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt.
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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.
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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.
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Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards.
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I'm doomed to act like myself, even when it's inconvenient!
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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.
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Im always terrified when Im writing.
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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.
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I'm not nearly smart enough or imaginative enough to tackle the novel form. Never happen.
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Age about 30, I stopped looking up my books in bookstores. Paying attention to the marketplace isn't a healthy thing for me.
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For me, everything's too much and nothing's enough.
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Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver.
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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.
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I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try -- without let up -- to break you.
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