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.
To insist on purity is to baptize instinct, to humanize art, and to deify personality.
I always say I write because I have questions, not because I have answers. It's true that you begin the conversation - that's the role of the artist. But it's not my job to tell us what to do next. I wish I had those tools.
I work with few colors, what creates the illusion of quantity is that they fell in the right place.
Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something.
With electronic music, you are not confined to the acoustics of a concert-hall, and that inspired me to bring my performances outdoors.
Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.
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