Quotes About Mary Karr

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

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.

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

The audiobooks I buy are never first-time reads - only rereadings of books I know well that I find intoxicating.

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

The editor self thinks only of saving the reader time and shaping a powerful emotional experience.

sentimentality is only emotion you haven't proven to the reader—emotion without vivid evidence.

Metaphorically speaking, I always make room for any evidence of scurvy in my characters, any mitigating ailments.

sister was. But I couldn't resist such a clear shot. So I said her

Later, I'l learn that's the structure of an elegy: lament, consolation; bad news, followed by good news.)

Her stories will no doubt reconfirm the only sliver of irrefutable wisdom on the subject of kin The Liars' Club's odyssey has taught me, now oft-repeated: a dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.

Daddy said a Republican was somebody who couldn't enjoy eating unless he knew somebody else was hungry