Quotes by Koren Zailckas

About Koren Zailckas:

Koren Zailckas is a bestselling American writer and memoirist. Her debut, Smashed, was released in 2005 by Viking Penguin and became a New York Times bestseller. Zailckas attended Nashoba Regional High School in Bolton, Massachusetts and Syracuse University.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I think what I learned in research is that as Americans, we're very distrustful of anger. We're not sure if we should repress it. The idea that anger is supposed to be controlled is American, and we try to keep it out of our homes.

Koren Zailckas

I do think anger is so difficult for women. Girls think it undermines their femininity; it's not very ladylike.

Koren Zailckas

We are taught to believe it's bad to be angry, or at least it's not good. That's not the case all throughout the world. People are more open and not embarrassed about it. For instance in Paris, people believe Americans have a really unhealthy relatio...

Koren Zailckas

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

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

Koren Zailckas

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

Koren Zailckas

It's meant I will act like less of an asshole, but feel much more like one.

Koren Zailckas

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 ...

Koren Zailckas

That's the thing about social drinking: In the end, it's the drinking that creates the scene, not the other way around. You grow to relish the buzz, regardless of the situation. Once you're there, really there inside that moment, with its neighbourly...

Koren Zailckas

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. Afterward, we withdrew from one another and...

Koren Zailckas

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

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 fro...

Koren Zailckas

I'm trying to figure out precisely which character flaw might be responsible for my latest life failure.

Koren Zailckas

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

I don't know where the idea originated that memoir writing is cathartic. For me, it's 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

I think when you're 14 years old, I think you're sort of looking for markers that prove you're an adult and you're independent of your parents.

Koren Zailckas

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

Koren Zailckas

I don't know where the idea originated that memoir writing is cathartic. For me, it's always felt like playing my own neurosurgeon, sans anesthesia.

Koren Zailckas

My short stature may have something to do with my tendency to shout when enraged. How else is anyone going to hear me way down here?

Koren Zailckas

If mothers are our first teachers, then having a narcissistic one teaches us that human closeness is terrifying, and the world is a heartless, inconsistent place.

Koren Zailckas

Author Bio

  • NameKoren Zailckas
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • Born1980