Memorable quotes from Mary Karr in Berkeley last night

On what she did after throwing away 500 pages of her memoir that was running four years late and crying for 3 days straight: “Well first I called Don DeLillo and he sent me a postcard that said “Write or Die,” which was, you know. So I sent him back a postcard that said “Write AND Die.” And then I called Robert Hass.”

On how Catholicism keeps her sane: ”I have to pray when things get too loud from the neck up. So like, the people on the subway in New York, when I want to turn a flamethrower on them, I bless them instead. And they bloom into people. They have facial features. So yeah, I have to pray every day. Because, you know, sometimes my brain thinks it can kill me and keep on living.”

Maupassant to Flaubert:

Fucking women is as monotonous as listening to male wit. I find that the news in the papers is always the same, that the vices are trivial, and that there aren’t enough different ways to compose a sentence.

Flaubert’s reply:

You complain about fucking being ‘monotonous’. There’s a simple remedy: cut it out for a bit. ‘The news in the papers is always the same’? That’s the complaint of a realist – and besides, what do you know about it? You should look at things more carefully … ‘The vices are trivial’? – but everything is trivial. ‘There aren’t enough different ways to compose a sentence’? – seek and ye shall find … You must – do you hear me, my young friend? – you must work harder than you do. I suspect you of being a bit of a loafer. Too many whores! Too much rowing! Too much exercise! A civilised person needs much less locomotion than the doctors claim. You were born to be a poet: be one. Everything else is pointless – starting with your pleasures and your health: get that much into your thick skull. Besides, your health will be all the better if you follow your calling … What you lack are ‘principles’. There’s no getting over it – that’s what you have to have; it’s just a matter of finding out which ones. For an artist there is only one: everything must be sacrificed to Art … To sum up, my dear Guy, you must beware of melancholy: it’s a vice.