Quotes from Mary Karr

I think the problem with visual media like TV is that they're reductive.

The thing I have to do as a writer, and that God permits me to do, is that I have to be willing to fail.

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.

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.

When people suffer, their relationships usually suffer as well. Period. And we all suffer because, as the Buddha says, that's the nature of being human and wanting stuff we don't always get.

Having devoted the first half of my life to the dark, I feel obliged to rever any pinpoint of light now.

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.

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

A university is a city of ideas, and we're grateful you became citizens of our city.

it was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I'd choose to be happy.

In my godless household, poems were the closest we came to sacred speech -- the only prayers said.

I find a great deal of comfort and care in my faith and prayer. I'd sooner do without air than prayer.

Sure the world breeds monsters, but kindness grows just as wild.

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.

I don't think I look like the pope's favorite Catholic - at least not under close scrutiny.

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.

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

The American religion-so far as there is one anymore-seems to be doubt. Whoever believes the least wins, because he'll never be found wrong.

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.

It's completely through prayer that I came to believe in God. I just sensed a presence south of my neck.

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.

I don't have a copy of my books, and the degree to which I never read them is profound. I never look.

The failures of other genres to provide an emotional connection with some of their characters and narratives gives memoir a toehold.

I'm always terrified when I'm writing.