Koren Zailckas Quotes

• I once heard someone say that the concept of moderation seems a little extreme, and tonight...I agree.

  Koren Zailckas

  Alcohol, Tonight, Littles

  45 Copy quote

• Without a bottle to hold, I feel incomplete, the way Plato says we are each born only half a circle, and we spend out lives seeking out our other half. A drink is my beloved. Without it, I am wanting; I feel half finished.

  Koren Zailckas

  Plato, Circles, Bottles

  Koren Zailckas (2006). “Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood”, p.121, Penguin

  13 Copy quote

• But in college, we can wear our alcohol abuse as proudly as our university sweatshirts; the two concepts are virtually synonymous.

  Koren Zailckas

  College, Two, Alcohol

  Koren Zailckas (2006). “Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood”, p.82, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

• Like most women, I remember my first drink in tender minutiae.

  Koren Zailckas

  Drinking, Firsts, Remember

  Koren Zailckas (2006). “Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood”, p.12, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

• But lately, when I’m drunk, I feel a hostility that I’ve never known before. It is a tension deep in my gut that makes me want to yell until my face is red, knock over glasses with the back of my hand, and kick people I don’t know in the shins.

  Koren Zailckas

  Glasses, Hands, People

  Koren Zailckas (2006). “Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood”, p.156, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

• I’ve been thinking I’d like to be Daisy; I’d like to have someone like Gatsby stare at my house for whole years and never stop dreaming of me

  Koren Zailckas

  Dream, Thinking, Years

  Koren Zailckas (2006). “Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood”, p.32, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• I think for one, we have to really accept that anger is a normal human emotion that can be a positive force for change.

  Koren Zailckas

  Thinking, Normal, Emotion

  "Getting Angry with author Koren Zailckas". Interview with Megan Johnson, www.bostonherald.com. September 27, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• I grew up in a family that despised displays of strong emotion, rage in particular. We stewed. We sulked. When arguments did occur, they were full-scale conniptions, and we regarded them as family failings.

  Koren Zailckas

  Strong, Emotion, Argument

  4 Copy quote

• My demeanor isn't that of a woman enraged. To see me slumped, glassy-eyed, holding a sandwich someone has cut for me into four "manageable" pieces, a person might tell you I look much more like a woman subdued.

  Koren Zailckas

  Cutting, Looks, Sandwiches

  Koren Zailckas (2010). “Fury: True Tales of a Good Girl Gone Ballistic”, p.41, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• I think statistics go in one ear and out the other. All of us respond to stories more than numbers.

  Koren Zailckas

  Thinking, Numbers, Stories

  6 Copy quote

• I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged.

  Koren Zailckas

  Writing, Feelings, Ambitious

  9 Copy quote

• My boyfriends have all been as stoical as queen's guards. They'd been patient, committed, and dispassionate, and I'd had to really debase myself to extract any emotion, either grin or grimace, from them.

  Koren Zailckas

  Queens, Ex Boyfriend, My Boyfriend

  6 Copy quote

• I am aware that somewhere along the line, I've subconsciously turned down the pitch of my speech, like a silencer of a gun that softens the sound of its firing. Now, even when I yell, I don't feel like I am using my full voice.

  Koren Zailckas

  Gun, Voice, Sound

  Koren Zailckas (2006). “Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood”, p.8, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• I dont know where the idea originated that memoir writing is cathartic. For me, its always felt like playing my own neurosurgeon, sans anesthesia. As a memoirist, you have to crack your head open and examine every uncomfortable thing in there.

  Koren Zailckas

  Writing, Ideas, Cracks

  14 Copy quote

• For the first month of school, writing is its own upper. Pounding on my computer keys feels like playing the piano, like arranging words into harmony that sings back to me.

  Koren Zailckas

  Writing, School, Keys

  Koren Zailckas (2006). “Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood”, p.170, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• Me? I'm just a literary girl gone wrong. Slow with the tongue. Quick with the pen. Undeniably cute. But, on the whole, ill-equipped for the privilege of living.

  Koren Zailckas

  Cute, Girl, Gone

  4 Copy quote

• I can’t help thinking about memoir as a down-and-up process: Dive down for color; come up for context. Sink back down for action; climb back up for self-awareness and gratitude.

  Koren Zailckas

  Gratitude, Thinking, Self

  4 Copy quote

• I'm sick of the ignorance that lack of funding has generated, of the fathers who apporach me at dinner parties with their four-year-old girls clasped to their pant legs and say, "Yeah, but studies say kids can buy drugs more easily than they can buy alcohol." To which I always respond, "I guess that means you keep heroin in your liquor cabinet?

  Koren Zailckas

  Girl, Father, Party

  4 Copy quote

• I have been a ballerina, a cheerleader and a sorority girl. I was the girliest girl alive.

  Koren Zailckas

  Girl, Sorority, Alive

  4 Copy quote

• There's a limit to my patience with anything that smacks of metaphysics. I squirm at the mention of "mind expansion" or "warm healing energy." I don't like drum circles, public nudity or strangers touching my feet.

  Koren Zailckas

  Yoga, Healing, Circles

  Koren Zailckas (2010). “Fury: True Tales of a Good Girl Gone Ballistic”, p.24, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

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