Karr Quotes

Almost every one flatters himself that he and his are exceptionable. ~ Alphonse Karr

If women only knew the extent of their power! ~ Alphonse Karr

KIDS IN DISTRESSED FAMILIES ARE GREAT repositories of silence and carry in their bodies whole arctic wastelands of words not to be uttered, stories not to be told. ~ Mary Karr

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. ~ Mary Karr

The words and sentences you take into your body from books are no less sacred and healing than communion. Surely at least one such person lives in your zip code. ~ Mary Karr

Joy, it is, which I've never known before, only pleasure or excitement. Joy is a different thing, because its focus exists outside the self-delight in something external, not satisfaction of some inner craving. ~ Mary Karr

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

We've met before you know?"
I look at him a little perplexed and a little hurt that he hasn't mentioned it. I nod my head indicating that, of course, I remember. Then with a low raspy voice I answer, "You remember meeting me and haven't said anything up until now. Why?"
With an equally low voice and the harshness seemingly gone in his tone, he says, "Why haven't you, Dahlia?" He's looking at me with his powerful green eyes and I know there's no seeing the future in them right now. ~ Kim Karr

Patti proposes that I pray to accept whatever reality I'm in, staying alert for practical solutions rather than issuing orders in prayer. It takes discipline to stop beseeching the heavens for wheelbarrows of gold ~ Mary Karr

That bar also delineated the realm of sweat and hourly wage, the working world that college was educating me to leave. Rewards in that realm were few. No one congratulated you for clocking out. Your salary was spare. The Legion served as recompense. So the physical comforts you bouth there - hot boudain sausage and cold beer - had value. You attended the place, by which I mean you not only went there but gave it attention your job didn't deserve. Pool got shot not as metaphor for some corporate battle, but as itself alone. And the spiritual comforts-friendship, for instance - couldn't be confused with payback for something you'd accomplished, for in the Legion everybody punched the same clock, drew the same wage, won the same prize. ~ Mary Karr

Rnesh karr slithis, I hissed back, which was Draconic for eat your own tail, the dragon version of go screw yourself. No extra translation needed. ~ Julie Kagawa

Together we read Keats's letters to his lost beloved about how the stitches on a cap she made him went through him like a spear. I lace my fingers with his. The average non-poetry devotee may think the intensity around this stuff off-kilter at the least, but for us, it's like digging our hands together into a secret vat of pearls. In that realm only we are rich as any royalty. ~ Mary Karr

It sometimes seems to me like we're not supposed to notice that Shug's colored, or that saying anything about it would be bad manners. That puzzles me because Shug's being colored strikes me as real obvious. And usually anybody's difference gets pounced on and picked at. This silence is a lie peculiar to a man's skin color, which makes it extra serious and extra puzzling. Daddy ~ Mary Karr

Just because two people ceased to exist as a unit, it didn't mean you no longer felt the other person's presence in your life. ~ Kim Karr

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

I liked to call myself a poet and had affected a habit of reading classical texts (in translation, of course – I was a lazy student). I would ride the Greyhound for thirty-six hours down from the Midwest to Leechfield, then spend days dressed in black in the scalding heat of my mother's front porch reading Homer (or Ovid or Virgil) and waiting for someone to ask me what I was reading. No one ever did. People asked me what I was drinking, how much I weighed, where I was living, and if I had married yet, but no one gave me a chance to deliver my lecture on Great Literature. ~ Mary Karr

I stop and stand in front of him, motionless - we are former lovers turned strangers. ~ Kim Karr

Before that summer, I had many times heard long-winded Baptist preachers take ten minutes to pray over card tables of potato salad and fried chicken at church picnics, but the way those sweating, red-faced men sat around on stacked pallets of lumber gulping oysters taught me most of what I knew about simple gladness. ~ Mary Karr

There are all kinds of things God wants me to do that I'm very obstreperous about. ~ Mary Karr

Relationships are made up of so many different emotions, but the one thing that keeps a relationship strong is love. Can doubt weaken such a strong bond? Not if two people don't let it – right? ~ Kim Karr

That line between love and lust was thin as a whisper. ~ Julia Karr

Brigitte told me once that in France they don't say I missed you, they say you were missing from me, and you were. ~ Kim Karr

The memoirist's job is not to add explosive whammies on every page, but to help the average person come in. ~ Mary Karr

The truth is when I went to graduate school I would've said I was among the least talented of the students, I was certainly the least smart, or less educated. But I worked very hard. ~ Mary Karr

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

I get about five memoirs per week in my mailbox, and few of them inspire anything but a desire to pick up the channel changer. ~ Mary Karr

I've never contended that I had a really horrible life. ~ Mary Karr

Those lyrics tell the story Dahlia, our story. I wrote that song five years ago and even now when I sing it, your face is the face I see. You're unforgettable Dahlia. You're perfect, really. ~ Kim Karr

Photography is not purely a mechanical process. You need to know how to look, where to point the camera, and when to press the button. These acts depend on the eye, mind, and heart. ~ Andy Karr

Our strange cynicism about truth as a possibility has permitted us to accept all manner of bullshit ~ Mary Karr

Dahlia, this is, was, in no way a one-night stand on my part. ~ Kim Karr

Your mother rolls her eyes at the cat lapping grapefruit juice, says, Everything that comes into this house is crazy - whether we choose them for that or they get that way, I don't know. ~ Mary Karr

And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, not as long as there are plums to eat and somebody
anybody
who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens on pinches, only rolling abundance. That's how you acquire the resolution for survival that the upcoming years are about to demand. You don't give it. You earn it. ~ Mary Karr

Comfort makes fools of us that way, and a kid gets faith back quick. ~ Mary Karr

That's what's so gorgeous about humanity. It doesn't matter how bleak our daily lives are, we still fight for the light. I think that's our divinity. We lean into love, even in the most hideous circumstances. We manage to hope. ~ Mary Karr

It turned out to be impossible for me to 'run away' in the sense other American teenagers did. Any movement at all was taken for progress in my family. ~ Mary Karr

how could love at first sight even exist when you were already in love with someone else? ~ Kim Karr

I get so lonely sometimes, I could put a box on my head and mail myself to a stranger. ~ Mary Karr

As he pushes aside a piece of my hair, tucking it behind my ear, he seductively whispers, "Dahlia, I want you. I want to kiss you, touch you, make you come over and over again. I've never wanted anyone as much as I want you ~ Kim Karr

Put your mind where your body is. One day at a time forces you to reckon with the instant you actually occupy, rather than living in fantasy la-la that never comes. ~ Mary Karr

Just know you'll always be my once in a lifetime. ~ Kim Karr

Dumb hope is what it hurts most to write, occupying the foolish schemes we pursued for decades, the blind alleys, the cliffs we stepped off. ~ Mary Karr

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

Life is a field of corn. Literature is the shot glass it distills down into. Lorrie Moore ~ Mary Karr

He feels so real. He's what I crave. He's what I want. He makes me feel alive. ~ Kim Karr

If you'd told me even a year before ... that I'd wind up whispering my sins in the confessional or on my knees saying the rosary, I would've laughed myself cockeyed. More likely pastime?Pole dancer. International spy. Drug mule. Assassin.
I drive under a sky black as graphite to meet my new spiritual director ... a bulky Franciscan nun named Sister Margaret, patiently going blind behind fish-tank glasses that magnify her eyes like goggles. ~ Mary Karr

Staring down at my wrist, I can't believe what I'm looking at. This adorably sweet and sexy man has just placed a very colorful linked bracelet of the cutest Pac-Man on my wrist. It has a yellow Pac-Man with the blue, red, pink, and orange monsters on it.
"I love it!" I manage as I swallow back my tears of joy. I throw myself around him and say, "Thank you."
He lifts me up and twirls me just once before setting me down. "Happy?"
Smiling up at him, I respond, "More than happy. ~ Kim Karr

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. ~ Mary Karr

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. ~ Mary Karr

You're back and forth with me, with your actions, with your emotions. You act like you don't remember me, then spring on me that you do. You flirt with me and then you stop on a dime. You kiss me and then you pull away as soon as I touch you. You're mad then you're not." I don't stop to take a breath or let him speak before finally raising the hand he's holding and letting it go. "You're holding my hand, then . . ." I trail off, not sure of how to finish that thought. Tearing my gaze from his, I try to rein in my emotions, to wipe the flustered girl up off the floor. ~ Kim Karr

Writing, regardless of the end result - whether good or bad, published or not, well reviewed or slammed - means celebrating beauty in an often ugly world. ~ Mary Karr

I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years. ~ Mary Karr

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. ~ Mary Karr

Religion seemed to me like one group of people telling another group that their color of red was the best. And that everyone had to believe that, or else. ~ Julia Karr

Every day I feel more like some defeated matador limping out of the arena after I've been gored, or like some general coming back from a long battle. ~ Mary Karr

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

Nothing matters but the quality of the affection - in the end - that has carved the trace in the mind dove ~ Mary Karr

Could love at first sight be real? ~ Kim Karr

Dalhia," he says, his tone is as dark and sad as the place I have lived for the past two years before meeting him. "One day, if you change your mind . . . just know you'll always be my once in a lifetime."
He presses kisses to my forehead and nose, then turns, leaving me at the front door to the house I shared with Ben for so many years. The house that is now empty is the house where, once again, I will be alone. ~ Kim Karr

All people have three characters, that which they exhibit, that which they are, and that which they think they are. ~ Alphonse Karr

I'm always terrified when I'm writing. ~ Mary Karr

Every reporter who came up in legacy media can tell you about a come-to-Jesus moment when an editor put them up against a wall and tattooed a message deep into their skull: show respect for the fundamentals of the craft, or you would not soon be part of it. ~ Mary Karr

I'm so addicted to you, everything you do, it doesn't matter if you're walking or dancing, when we're standing here, the sounds you make and the smile on your face, they're unlike anything I've ever seen. ~ Kim Karr

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

Every now and then we enter the presence of the numinous and deduce for an instant how we're formed, in what detail the force that infuses every petal might specifically run through us, wishing only to lure us into our full potential. ~ Mary Karr

The trick in that town was getting through a night at all without stalling in the sludge of your own thoughts. ~ Mary Karr

If dysfunction means that a family doesn't work, then every family ambles into some arena in which that happens, where relationships get strained or even break down entirely. We fail each other or disappoint each other. That goes for parents, siblings, kids, marriage partners - the whole enchilada. ~ Mary Karr

Memoir done right is an art, a made thing. It's not just raw reportage flung splat on the page. ~ Mary Karr

Love is the most terrible, and also the most generous of the passions; it is the only one which includes in its dreams the happiness of someone else. ~ Alphonse Karr

Reading is socially accepted disassociation. You flip a switch and you're not there anymore. It's better than heroin. More effective and cheaper and legal. ~ Mary Karr

You were my once in a lifetime.
This I knew from the moment your eyes met mine.
You were my once in a lifetime.
This I knew the first time I whispered into your ear and my heart stopped.
You were my once in a lifetime.
This I knew when your face touched my spirit.
You were my once in a lifetime.
This I knew when I kissed your lips and felt it in my soul.
So where did you go, where did you go? ~ Kim Karr

But whether you're a memoirist or not, there's a psychic cost for lopping yourself off from the past: it may continue to tug on you without your being aware of it. And lying about it can - for all but the most hardened sociopath - carve a lonely gap between your disguise and who you really are. The practiced liar also projects her own manipulative, double-dealing façade onto everyone she meets, which makes moving through the world a wary, anxious enterprise. It's hard enough to see what's going on without forcing yourself to look through the wool you've pulled over your own eyes…For the more haunted among us, only looking back at the past can permit it finally to become past. ~ Mary Karr

No writer can impose his own standards onto any other, nor claim to speak for the whole genre. ~ Mary Karr

How much smaller the large places are once we're grown up, when we have car keys and credit cards. ~ Mary Karr

After Mother got her picture, we all stood around the fire truck eating moon-shaped cookies dusted with powdered sugar that the mayor's wife had brought in some Tupperware. It was stuff like that that'd break your heart about Leechfield, what Daddy meant when he said the town was too ugly not to love. ~ Mary Karr

Standing in the shower, I feel something on the back of my leg that turns out to be my ass. ~ Mary Karr

Uncertainty is the worst of all evils until the moment when reality makes us regret uncertainty. ~ Alphonse Karr

They feed us the way the bread of communion does, with a nourishment that seems to form new flesh. According ~ Mary Karr

Writing the real self seldom seems original enough when you first happen on it. ~ Mary Karr

I revise and revise and revise. Any editor of mine will tell you how crappy my early drafts are. Revisions are about clarifying and evoking feelings in the reader in the same way they were once evoked in me. ~ Mary Karr

Her parents roared around in the masks of monsters. Not ~ Mary Karr

River looks at me for a beat, dragging his tongue over his lower lip before continuing. "This is how I remember it. I was singing a gig at the USC Campus Bar. During a break I went to grab a beer. I met the most incredible girl whom I don't think even knew that I sang in the band, but loved music. We seemed to hit it off. We did a couple of shots, drank a few drinks, and talked without any pretense. I asked her to wait for me after the show. She didn't say anything about having a boyfriend or not sticking around and then when I finished she was gone. ~ Kim Karr

Pressing his lips firmly to mine, he starts to kiss me in the most erotic way. First, he lightly kisses me, then opens our mouths together and exhales. I can only inhale his sweet breath. He runs the tip of his tongue over my lower lip before slipping it into my mouth and firmly pressing his lips to mine. I'm left breathless as the kiss ends and he takes my hand. ~ Kim Karr

Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses. ~ Alphonse Karr

When you've been hurt enough as a kid (maybe at any age), it's like you have a trick knee. Most of your life, you can function like an adult, but add in the right portions of sleeplessness and stress and grief, and the hurt, defeated self can bloom into place. ~ Mary Karr

Happiness is composed of misfortunes avoided. ~ Alphonse Karr

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

There's a space at the bottom of an exhale, a little hitch between taking in and letting out that's a perfect zero you can go into. There's a rest point between the heart muscle's close and open - an instant of keenest living when you're momentarily dead. You can rest there. ~ Mary Karr

Dahlia, I love everything about you. I know in my heart you're my girl, so amazing, so fun, so beautiful." I feel my heart pounding and I know it's about to jump out of my chest. Turning my head, I look into his eyes. The same gleaming green eyes as the first time I saw him. I thought then what I know now, that if I jump in I will never swim out. They are telling me he's my future. ~ Kim Karr

Many people think that virtue consists of severity towards others. ~ Alphonse Karr

Baby don't cry, I promise I'll fix this for you. Everything will be all right. ~ Kim Karr

Every writer needs two selves - the generative self and the editor self. ~ Mary Karr

If your goal is to polish up a fake person you can sell to a public you perceive as dumb, the unexamined life will do perfectly well, thank you. ~ Mary Karr

Your heart, Mary Karr, he'd say. His pen touched my sternum, and it felt for all the world like the point of a dull spear as he said, Your heart knows what your head don't. Or won't. ~ Mary Karr

At the Sound of the Gunshot,
Leave A Message

That's what my friend spoke
into his grim machine the winter he first went mad
as we both did in our thirties with still
no hope of revenue, gravely inking
our poems on pages held fast by gyres
the color of lead.

Godless, our minds
did monster us, left us bobbing as in a swamp
until we sank. His eyes were burn holes
in a swollen face. His breath was a venom
he drank deep of. He called his own tongue
a scar, this poet

who can crowbar open
the most sealed heart, make ash flower,
and the cocked shotgun's double-zero mouths
(whose pellets had exploded star holes into plaster and porcelain
and not a few locked doors) never touched
my friend's throat. Praise

Him, whose earth is green.

(for Franz Wright) ~ Mary Karr

As novelist Harry Crews once wrote, I'm the kind of person who - if he can't have too much of something - doesn't want any of it. In ~ Mary Karr

Could we do the interview thing tomorrow because you're looking far too sexy for me to concentrate on anything other than you? ~ Kim Karr

In those days, I still enjoyed a child's desperate tendency to put sparkles on my whole tribe. ~ Mary Karr

Sometimes you have to chase what you really want because everything in life worth having won't fall into your lap. ~ Kim Karr

I loved the idea that looking at a painting or listening to a concerto could make you somehow "transcend" the day-in, day-out bullshit that grinds you down: how in one instant of pure attention you could draw something inside that made you forever larger ~ Mary Karr