Caroline Knapp
Caroline Knapp
Caroline Knappwas an American writer and columnist whose candid best-selling memoir Drinking: A Love Story recounted her 20-year battle with alcoholism. She was the daughter of noted psychiatrist Peter H. Knapp, who did groundbreaking research into psychosomatic medicine...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth8 November 1959
CountryUnited States of America
keys useless latter
The key, I suppose, has less to do with insight than with willingness, the former being relatively useless without the latter.
deal gene safe shut walked
I've always walked around with the sense that the world is not a safe place. I didn't get the spontaneous gene or the adventure one, really. After going through the day with its stresses, when I shut that door at night, I don't have to deal with anything but dinner, 'E.R.' and my bathrobe.
best horrors life seventh several time
Who has the best features? This was a little game, conducted several times and always with the same results, in seventh grade, the time when so many of life's little horrors begin.
breakfast cereal clock eat morning muffins odd oddly
I eat breakfast pretty much 'round the clock - muffins in the morning, scones for lunch, cereal at night - which may be odd but is also oddly satisfying, if only because the choice is my own.
business collective falling intake levels lunch order pray restaurant restraint women
I go to a restaurant with a group of women and pray that we can order lunch without falling into the semi-covert business of collective monitoring, in which levels of intake and restraint are aired, compared, noticed: 'What are you getting? Is that all you're having? A salad? Oh, please.'
baggy bean clothing heavy
The clothes are different: pre-dog, I used to be very finicky and self-conscious about how I looked; now I schlep around in the worst clothing - big heavy boots, baggy old sweaters, a hooded down parka from L.L. Bean that makes me look like an astronaut.
against club gained great health immediate impulse locker room toward walk
I walk into a health club locker room and feel an immediate impulse toward scrutiny, the kneejerk measuring of self against other: 'That one has great thighs, this one's gained weight, who's thin, who's fat, how do I compare?'
alone amount census certain destined figures spend time wondering
Census figures be damned: If you choose to be alone, you're destined to spend a certain amount of time wondering why.
absent acted boundary dogs fill fluidity hard human kinds lack pet roles
The kinds of roles dogs fill can be hard to come by in human relationships. We touch the dog or the pet at whim. There is a lack of self-consciousness and a fluidity to it that is absent from most human relationships. If someone acted that way to you, you'd feel claustrophobic pretty quickly. It's a boundary violation.
dance danced life minutes theme tiny variations vigilance watched women work
Tiny slices, no frosting, forty-five minutes on the StairMaster: These are the conditions, variations on a theme of vigilance and self-restraint that I've watched women dance to all my life, that I've danced to myself instinctively and still have to work to resist.
beauty carries color confident dog either fur high love side small study white
When you study a dog you love, you find beauty in every small detail, and so it is with Lucille: I have become enchanted by the small asymmetrical whorls of white fur on either side of her chest, and by her tail, which she carries in a high confident curve, and by her eyes, which are watchful and intelligent, the color of chestnuts.
desires engage intricate math personal split variety women
Women are actually superb at math; they just happen to engage in their own variety of it, an intricate personal math in which desires are split off from one another, weighed, balance, traded, assessed.
amazing love overlook willing
When you love somebody, or something, it's amazing how willing you are to overlook the flaws.
adulthood behaved came drinks evening felt home informed looked model night passed rationally sat saw worked
I saw my parents as model grown-ups, and their manner, their silence, informed my sense of what adulthood looked and felt like. Grown-ups behaved rationally and calmly. Grown-ups worked during the day and came home at night and sat down for drinks and passed the evening quietly.