I'm always terrified when I'm writing.
Interpretation
Writing can be a daunting and fear-inducing process, reflecting the vulnerability of the writer.
Mary Karr's quote highlights the inherent fears and anxieties that often accompany the process of writing. It suggests that even accomplished writers experience moments of terror and self-doubt, emphasizing the emotional and psychological challenges involved in expressing oneself through the written word.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a writing workshop to encourage participants to embrace their fears.
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.
Mother’s particular devils had remained mysterious to me for decades. So had her past. Few born liars ever intentionally embark in truth’s direction, even those who believe that such a journey might axiomatically set them free.
I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years.
I always say that a poet loves the world, and the prose writer needs to create an alternative world.
Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You're three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down.
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.
Poets are excellent students of blizzards and salt and broken statuary, but they are always elsewhere for the test. Any intention in the writing of poetry besides the aim to make a poem, of engaging the materials, SHOULD be disappointed. If the poet does not have the chutzpah to jeopardize habituated assumptions and practices, what will be produced will be sleep without dream, a copy of a copy of a copy.
There's no retirement for an artist,its your way of living so theres no end to it.
A good director's not sure when he gets on the set what he's going to do.
There's no line between a designer and consumer.
It's weird because I see black gay characters on television all the time, but do I relate to them? Not always, because they're set pieces.
I think plays have nothing to do with one's own personal life. Not in my experience, anyway. The stuff of drama has to do, not with your subject matter, anyway, but with how you treat it. Drama includes pain, loss, regret - that's what drama is about!
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