Mary Karr Quotes

You can't ever create defensively. You just have to create the next thing that really speaks to you.

To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.

When I write a story, I have no idea what I'm doing. All I know is that I want to share something with my readers. The whole idea of writing is this place where you lose control, where you're irresponsible - it's a very liberating place.

When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best - that is inspiration.

I write a chapter, then edit it and edit it and edit it and edit it. I don't think we mine creativity from within. It's bestowed from on high, from God.

Some people say, 'Write what you know.' My thing is, 'Write what scares you.'

For years, I was watching other people have so much fun playing out their version of authorship, like Louis C.K. and Larry David. As I watched them do their thing, I began to pine for the days when I had a lot less expected of me and, often, a lot more creative freedom. The courage that those guys have is always captivating to me.

I don't believe in writer's block or waiting for inspiration. If you're a writer, you sit down and write.

The best thing for an actor is to try it his way. The way they do it may not work, but it may inspire me to try something else.

I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

I was taught that to create anything you had to believe in failure, simply because you had to be prepared to go through an idea without any fear. Failure, you learned, as I did in art school, to be a wonderful thing. It allowed you to get up in the morning and take the pillow off your head.

You have to have an unlimited imagination, an unlimited restraint on your inhibition when you're working. You have to even dare to fail, even in a scene, whatever it is.

I think we writers are very superstitious. We don't know why it's working when it's working, so we attach cause and effect.

Give the composer time to experiment, time to try out ideas. Also, the time to fail. When the composer has very little time, the temptation is to reach for stock ideas - ideas they know will work and have worked in the past.

To write what is not dead on the page, one has to be open to all kinds of disturbances and challenges and confusion.

Allowing yourself to suck is the hard part of writing music. If you allow yourself to suck, you will probably write something better.

Each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of the words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record.

As a writer, you don't know what the hell you're doing. You're just doing it. You hope it works out well.

I don't carry notebooks and I don't consciously store ideas. I try not to think that I am a writer and I am pretty good at doing that. I don't like writers, but then I don't like insurance salesmen either.

Faith is almost the bottom line of creativity; it requires a leap of faith any time we undertake a creative endeavor, whether this is going to the easel, or the page, or onto the stage.

This beginning with Audacity, or being thrown into the middle of it, is already a very great part of the art of painting.

If you’re going to create, create a lot. Creativity is not like playing the slot machines, where failure to win means you go home broke. With creativity, if you don’t win, you’re usually no worse off than if you hadn’t played.

The writer's secret is not inspiration - for it is never clear where it comes from - it is his stubbornness, his patience.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.