Koren Zailckas
Koren Zailckas
Koren Zailckasis a bestselling American writer and memoirist. Her debut, Smashed, was released in 2005 by Viking Penguin and became a New York Times bestseller. Zailckas attended Nashoba Regional High School in Bolton, Massachusetts and Syracuse University...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
girl father party
I'm sick of the ignorance that lack of funding has generated, of the fathers who apporach me at dinner parties with their four-year-old girls clasped to their pant legs and say, "Yeah, but studies say kids can buy drugs more easily than they can buy alcohol." To which I always respond, "I guess that means you keep heroin in your liquor cabinet?
college two alcohol
But in college, we can wear our alcohol abuse as proudly as our university sweatshirts; the two concepts are virtually synonymous.
writing ideas cracks
I dont know where the idea originated that memoir writing is cathartic. For me, its always felt like playing my own neurosurgeon, sans anesthesia. As a memoirist, you have to crack your head open and examine every uncomfortable thing in there.
gratitude thinking self
I can’t help thinking about memoir as a down-and-up process: Dive down for color; come up for context. Sink back down for action; climb back up for self-awareness and gratitude.
drinking firsts remember
Like most women, I remember my first drink in tender minutiae.
strong emotion argument
I grew up in a family that despised displays of strong emotion, rage in particular. We stewed. We sulked. When arguments did occur, they were full-scale conniptions, and we regarded them as family failings.
girl alive sorority
I have been a ballerina, a cheerleader and a sorority girl. I was the girliest girl alive.
thinking numbers statistics
I think statistics go in one ear and out the other. All of us respond to stories more than numbers.
hands glasses drunk
But lately, when I’m drunk, I feel a hostility that I’ve never known before. It is a tension deep in my gut that makes me want to yell until my face is red, knock over glasses with the back of my hand, and kick people I don’t know in the shins.
queens ex-boyfriend my-boyfriend
My boyfriends have all been as stoical as queen's guards. They'd been patient, committed, and dispassionate, and I'd had to really debase myself to extract any emotion, either grin or grimace, from them.
dream thinking years
I’ve been thinking I’d like to be Daisy; I’d like to have someone like Gatsby stare at my house for whole years and never stop dreaming of me
alcohol littles tonight
I once heard someone say that the concept of moderation seems a little extreme, and tonight...I agree.
catching ways
I'm getting there. I'm catching up, I think. I feel like I have a ways to go.
school writing piano
For the first month of school, writing is its own upper. Pounding on my computer keys feels like playing the piano, like arranging words into harmony that sings back to me.