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

Im always terrified when Im writing.

In my godless household, poems were the closest we came to sacred speech -- the only prayers said.

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.

The failures of other genres to provide an emotional connection with some of their characters and narratives gives memoir a toehold.

I kept the fingers of my left hand crossed all the time, while on my right-hand fingers I counted anything at all—steps to the refrigerator, seconds on the clock, words in a sentence—to keep my head occupied. The counting felt like something to hang on to, as if finding the right numbers might somehow crack the code on whatever system ran the slippery universe we were moving through.

If you lie to your husband - even about something so banal as how much you drink - each lie is a brick in a wall going up between you, and when he tells you he loves you, it's deflected away.