Zitat des Tages von Mary Karr:
I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years.
As a memoirist, I strive for veracity.
Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it.
The emotional stakes a memoirist bets with could not be higher, and it's physically enervating. I nap on a daily basis like a cross-country trucker.
Most of the people I write about I'm still in touch with, so I would be loath to make up stuff about them.
I don't have a copy of my books, and the degree to which I never read them is profound. I never look.
For days on end, I avoid the Web, never logging in until about two or three, after I've written all morning. On a good week, I don't go online till after Wednesday, so four or five days might lapse without my checking e-mail.
Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself.
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.
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.
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.
There are women succeeding beyond their wildest dreams because of their sobriety.
I've never contended that I had a really horrible life.
I'm always terrified when I'm writing.
I'm always astonished by the confidence my readers put in me.
I find a great deal of comfort and care in my faith and prayer. I'd sooner do without air than prayer.
It's completely through prayer that I came to believe in God. I just sensed a presence south of my neck.
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.
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.
When I got sober, I thought giving up was saying goodbye to all the fun and all the sparkle, and it turned out to be just the opposite. That's when the sparkle started for me.
