Mary Karr
Mary Karr
Mary Karris an American poet, essayist and memoirist. She rose to fame in 1995 with the publication of her bestselling memoir The Liars' Club. She is the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth16 January 1955
CountryUnited States of America
people
Most of the people I write about I'm still in touch with, so I would be loath to make up stuff about them.
addictive buy coke counting diet god last people
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.
both consistent involve partly people practice skeptical sort suspicious
Both my parents were agnostic. My mother was kind of a Buddhist. She had some spiritual tendencies, but they were kind of flaky - New Agey, you know? Which is partly why I'm suspicious of that sort of thing. I'm skeptical of any spiritual practice that doesn't involve other people and doesn't involve some sort of consistent tradition.
coming exactly family people
I always thought my family was so bizarre, so when people started coming up to me and saying, 'My family was exactly like yours,' I was completely knocked out.
art conviction morally people strongly useful
My idea of art is, you write something that makes people feel so strongly that they get some conviction about who they want to be or what they want to do. It's morally useful not in a political way, but it makes your heart bigger; it's emotionally and spiritually empowering.
people suffering stuff
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.
writing people psychological
I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities.
art ideas people
People who didn't live pre-Internet can't grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. I stopped in the middle of the SAT to memorize a poem, because I thought, This is a great work of art and I'll never see it again.
ability artistic cannot compete economy experience full period poetry prose short time
Prose cannot compete with the economy of poetry, the ability to have a full artistic experience in a short period of time.
god permits willing
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.
alone arrogant charge hard major understand
I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate, and I'm just an arrogant little thing. It's hard for me to admit that I can't understand something, let alone not be in charge of it.
information music poetry prose
Poetry privileges music and is aesthetically more challenging. Prose privileges information and is emotionally more challenging.
hours kid piece raise six work
On a piece of prose, you have to work at least six hours a day. I don't know how you can do that and teach and raise a kid and paint the house.
god
There are all kinds of things God wants me to do that I'm very obstreperous about.