Quote

As a memoirist, I strive for veracity.

Mary Karr

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mary Karr
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 16
Historian
Poet
Writer
Groves
Texas
Veracity
Strive
Memoirist

More quotes by Mary Karr

Image
Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards.
Mary Karr
Image
The voice of God does not pander, offers no five-year plan, no long-term solution, nary an edict. It is small & fond & local. Don't look for your initials in the geese honking overhead or to see thru the glass even darkly. It says the most obvious crap - put down that gun, you need a sandwich.
Mary Karr
Image
I've never contended that I had a really horrible life.
Mary Karr
Image
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
Image
Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt.
Mary Karr
Image
I'm doomed to act like myself, even when it's inconvenient!
Mary Karr
Image
Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver.
Mary Karr
Image
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
Image
Love is the only passion which includes in its dreams the happiness of someone else.
Mary Karr
Image
Im always terrified when Im writing.
Mary Karr
Image
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.
Mary Karr
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I find a great deal of comfort and care in my faith and prayer. I'd sooner do without air than prayer.
Mary Karr
Image
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
Image
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.
Mary Karr
Image
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.
Mary Karr
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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