Mary Karr Quotes

In my 20s I was such a serious, boring-looking person. I would never do my nails. I never even danced. But I was taught by the women. They had gone through hell, but they would dance and sing. I came to realise I can't argue for a happy world if I am not happy myself.

I've always been so apathetic. I figured, OK, maybe the world is going to fall down around me. Now I want to make a better world... that's motherhood.

I got sober, and I got happy again.

I'm sober now and very happy.

The thing that drove me, and the thing that still drives me today to stay sober is all the blessings that have come into my life since this happened.

When I finally got sober, I moved towards what I might have been if I hadn't been destroying myself when I was young.

I've enjoyed every day of sobriety and I felt so much better immediately.

Divorce becomes a holy moment when you choose to use it as a catalyst for having an extraordinary life.

Getting sober just exploded my life. Now I have a much clearer sense of myself and what I can and can't do. I am more successful than I have ever been. I feel very positive where I never did before, and I think that's all a direct result of getting sober.

I got sober. I stopped killing myself with alcohol. I began to think: 'Wait a minute - if I can stop doing this, what are the possibilities?' And slowly it dawned on me that it was maybe worth the risk.

You don't have to stay where you are; you can make a change.

Until I went to rehab, I didn't understand what it did.

Once I started dancing, I was not the spoiled brat or the rebellious child that I was as a child.

So many people think being single is the end of something, but it's really a beginning - a good beginning.

When I stopped drinking... there were so many things I had to face that I didn't even realize were part of my makeup before. When you do that and have any changes that severe, you lose a lot of things, both good and bad.

Real freedom is creative, proactive, and will take me into new territories. I am not free if my freedom is predicated on reacting to my past.

Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world.

I can't emphasise enough how grateful I am to have come upon sobriety.

I have a lot of shame, and until I got sober at 42 years of age, I had never voted. I was just a hippie.

The concept of The 'Most Beautiful Moment in Life', that was chapter one for us; it feels like that because we were starting from the bottom, but on this concept, 'Love Yourself', we started to talk about some brighter things, like the real things in life.

I'm actually thrilled with the woman I'm turning out to be.

I found my feet in my 40s: got divorced at 40, two years of drinking, and then, at 42, I became sober. My 30s were the most boring phase.

I'm very happy with my decision to go sober. It's helped my life. It's helped my mental stability.

Once I was a prisoner lost inside myself with the world surrounding me, wandering through the misery, but now I am free. Free to love, free to laugh, free to soar, free to shine, free to give.

If you don't like who you are and where you are, don't worry about it because you're not stuck either with who you are or where you are. You can grow. You can change. You can be more than you are.