230 Quotes by Mary Karr

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.

Poetry privileges music and is aesthetically more challenging. Prose privileges information and is emotionally more challenging.

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.

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.

I think the problem with visual media like TV is that they're reductive.

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.

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.

Most of the people I write about I'm still in touch with, so I would be loath to make up stuff about them.

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