Mary Karr, Poet/Memoirist/Professor
@marykarrlit
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Liars’ Club, Cherry, Viper Rum, Lit, Sinners Welcome, Art of Memoir, Tropic of Squalor
Manhattan, NY
Joined June 2010
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Pinned Tweet
Telling somebody to ‘relax’ has worked zero times.
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On the 6 train tonight, a couple takes a table out and starts a ping pong game....
#I
❤️NYC
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Overheard on subway: ‘To cancel the national debt, the govt could do the impeachment trial on pay per view’
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Overheard: ‘When you’re dead you don’t know you’re dead. The pain is felt by others. The same thing happens when you’re stupid.’
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Deeply saddened by the allegations against
#JunotDiaz
& I support every woman brave enough to speak. The violence
#DavidFosterWallace
inflicted on me as a single mom was ignored by his biographer &
@NewYorker
as ‘alleged’ despite my having letters in his hand. But DFW was white.
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When everybody in NYC claps and bangs on pots at 7 pm to thank the health professionals and first responders et al, I remember why I love this city. Makes my heart bigger to live here.
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I not only weep for my grad students whose waived tuition will now rack up five-figure annual tax bills on poverty-level incomes, I weep for a country too dumbassed to invest in brain capital.
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Thirty-two years ago today, I woke up with an axe-in-my-forehead hangover & soul-blistering remorse & have not had a drink since thanks to god & my son & all the outlaws & topless dancers met in church basements. If you’re struggling in the dark, they’re the folks with lanterns.
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#PhilipSeymourHoffman
lost to us four years ago today—don’t drink, go to meetings, ask for help.
#Recovery
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32 years ago today, I stumbled into a church basement w/ a hatchet-in-the-head hangover & a belly full of shame. People there loved me till I could love myself. Thanks to all the outlaws & prophets & topless dancers. And to my son
@BlindSpotStud
, who gave me the best reason.
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You have to learn to get up from the table when love is no longer being served.—Nina Simone
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My beloved MFA student
@MosabAbuToha
was arrested in
#Gaza
yesterday by the IDF. I know him to be an honorable man, husband & father of 3 kids, a decorated poet who came to us from Harvard. No one cares wot I think, but I demand his release, by all that is just&holy.
@NewYorker
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Twitter friends, my sister passed away yesterday after a quick, devastating battle with cancer. She was a force of nature and an ancient hero of mine. I’ll be taking a break from social media. Please keep her and her family in your prayers.
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Often what we say to ourselves is more dispiriting than anything we'd tolerate from another. Apply kindness to self as needed.
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30 years ago today i stumbled hungover into a circle of aluminum folding chairs having tried for almost 3 years to stop drinking on my own. haven’t had a drink since. thnx to all the drunks & outlaw saints & topless dancers. you made me make it.
#HBDAY2me
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The holidays when I was lonely & broke & feeling sorry for myself, a wise woman urged me to volunteer at a shelter, & I had one of the happiest meals of my life w a guy who'd made himself a turban out of yellow crime scene tape. Love whoever crosses yr path....
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If someone tells you you’re too much for them, it’s perfectly fine to think they’re not enough for you.
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Overheard: 'Terrorism is the only job where white people do three times the work & get no credit.' 3/4 of our mass shootings are far-right white guys, America.
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The only thing lonelier than writing is not writing.
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Here’s some patronizing treacle like
#BlaseyFord
had to suffer: I hope
#BrettKavanuagh
gets some help for his anger problem, his self pity problem, and his profound sense of entitlement....Also the idea that he was drinking hard as a teen and never passed out? Puh-lese.
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#WritingTip
. Walk. Walk w/o earplugs or podcasts or music. Move your body & look & let your brain hum. Neuroscientists judge the detached but curious ‘default’ mind set we get on a stroll a source of creativity, like a cauldron original thoughts can bubble up from. Writers walk.
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29 years ago today, I woke up craving a drink I haven’t taken since. Thanks to my mother, who lit the torch & to a group of drunks met in church basements. Everybody I got sober with who drank is in the ground now. I owe all the outlaws & topless dancers who held out their hands
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Every now n then, those long-praying Baptists get it right.....
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Overheard: ‘Don’t light yourself on fire to keep somebody else warm.’
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At the top of a new page, I often pen ‘This does not count,’ which my pal Donna Tartt taught me to lighten the load. Reminding yall to remind my dang self
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1. When a colleague choked me, I told another colleague, who literally said, ‘I don’t want to hear about it.’ 2. The other time I was assaulted, an ADA told me unless I was beaten bad enough to be hospitalized, they wouldn’t prosecute.
#WhyIDidntReport
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People keep asking what my future granddaughter will call me (as if I get a vote). Whatever the little squid picks, I’ll answer to: MamaKarr, Abuelita, Nonna, Big Mama, NeeNee, Glamma. What honorific do yall favor?
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The cure for loneliness is solitude. — Marianne Moore
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#WritingTip
: Memorize poetry & short prose hunks. This makes language eucharistic: you eat it. You take somebody else’s passion & suffering into your body, and it transforms you. Every bank line lets you rifle your beauty file. It rewires yr head & keeps you in company w/ gods.
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On my worst Valentines Day ever, I was so lonely, I bought a goldfish and took it to ‘dinner’ about four in the afternoon. When the waiter said, ‘Anything for your friend?’, I said, This is a very special evening for us. And because it was NYC, he brought two forks with dessert.
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Overturning
#RoevWade
would not stop abortion. It would stop safe, legal abortions, and the women punished—by (mostly) men taking away safe options—would pay with their bodies & lives. I am a pro-choice Catholic. If you don’t believe in abortion, don’t have one.
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Starting to write a book is like being trapped in a room with the most stupid, inarticulate version of yourself
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A sign from on high mebbe: 'You will be too much for some people. Those aren't your people.' A loving shout out to you too-muchers out there--yall perfect like you are!
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Been looking for romantic advice for the lovelorn I could post with oomph. This doesn’t mean you won’t have trouble w/ your sweetheart, just that it’ll be smart trouble.
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Thirty-three years ago this day, I woke with an axe-in-my-forehead hangover, and though I’d been struggling two years to stop drinking—in and out—I haven’t had a drink since. Thanks to all the outlaws and topless dancers who’ve hauled me struggling into the light.
#Sober
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Everybody who wants to nickel & dime about how Kamala is not enough this or too much that: that’s what racism & misogyny look like—death by a thousand cuts. (It’s the voice women internalize about their bodies.) I invite you with love to come get in the boat & row.
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Male writing student to female prof: I can’t comment on this story. I don’t understand women.
Female prof: You understand women. They’re human beings.
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'You will be too much for some people. Those aren't your people.'
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28 years ago today, I crawled up outa that whiskey bottle. Buckets of thanks to all who rescued me from that effin horror show.
#miracle
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Student loan interest not deductible in war-on-brains tax bill: Make America. dumb again!
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Spent some time w/ a profoundly suffering pal today I felt helpless in front of. The old me would've scrambled to solve stuff but just listening after a while started to feel almost holy. Such courage every single human has to have just being alive in this wiggly place.
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Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they’re worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it’s nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.-Merton to Dorothy Day
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36 years ago today, my beloved oil worker daddy went to live with Jesus. Still miss him. Still step into my dresses (instead of pulling them on overhead) because he dressed me most often & that’s how he put his britches on. Hey Daddy, yr still my hero. 🫀
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When I asked George Saunders what he thought about death, he said, 'I'm against it.'
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#WritingTip
Keep a commonplace notebook where you copy longhand the most lumonous lines and sentences you can find. I've done this for 40 years & it's schooled me in syntax & paragraph/poem structure: a form of secular church before the lords of beauty. Great prep when yr stuck.
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If nobody told you they loved you today, by God, I love you. Happy V Day to the poets & outlaws, the squeakers & howlers, readers & codependent teachers & wounded healers, & all the topless dancers. Glad to be hurtling thru space w yall....💝🌹🙏🏻
#Valentines2019
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When the yoga teacher said “The world needs your enoughness",
I rolled up my mat & left
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Most any
#suicide
is killing the wrong person. One of the few to survive jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge said the minute he stepped off he was sorry and woke up glad for another chance. If mental illness weren’t so stigmatized it’d be a better planet.Pls get help.
#depression
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I write for the same reason I read—to find a better way of being alone, to be less lonely, to enter into the 5000-year-old conversation I’ve been eavesdropping on since I first deciphered the alphabet 60 years ago.
#amwriting
#WritingLife
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Not every page you generate will win the adulation of millions. But if one sentence touches somebody—anybody, just one human being—you’re in the room with Shakespeare.
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Hemingway once asked a bullfighter what exercises he did for strength. And the guy sd, ‘What do I want with strength man? The bull weighs half a ton. Let the bull have the strength.’ Each great writer wins by embracing her singular talent. Forget fashion: do you.
#writingtip
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I picked the grad school I weasled into because
#LouiseGLuck
was there, then felt too cowed to work with her, till Bob Hass gave me a nudge. She gave me courage I didn’t have & put me forward in rooms where I didn’t belong. RIP, LG
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The worst Valentine’s of my life, I bought a goldfish in a plastic bag & told the diner’s counter dude ‘This is a very special evening for us’. When he didnt laugh, I ordered a soup with two spoons. If nobody told you they love you today, I love you.
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It’s my born day, & I blink awake as I always do feeling lucky I’m on this side of the grass & hurtling through space with all yall.
#ThanksForTheLight
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Whether yr Christian or not, you may find solace from Advent’s call: not just to wait, but to wait with hope. Despair is cheap & easy for me lately. It skirts the edge of every room w/ its slithering rat’s tail. Hope is a radical act, and it takes big brass ones. Who’s with me?
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I wish me today couldve told scared 10-year-old me how some day she’d have a set of car keys & a cash card, a room of her own, & love & work aplenty. They scared the ever-loving tar out of her, but it all turned out way better than okay
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Lemme say I ❤️ Ben Lerner. But it rankles me that when men write about themselves it’s called ‘autofiction’ and praised as inventive genius. And women doing the same thing get ghettoized as ‘domestic’
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People are armed to the teeth in Texas, but in
#ElPaso
, those big-talking gun-toting cowboys saved nobody. 19 innocents dead.
#thoughtsandprayers
worthless without gun legislation
#EnoughIsEnough
#TheNRAisATerroristOrg
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God I love when my friend
@JohnFugelsang
talks about Jesus in a way to scare the tar out of flag toting, chest thumping Christians who live to judge, damn, smite, marginalize, attack and arrest, starve and lock up and exclude others in the name of Jesus.
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On this rainy day, a woman in the museum hall sobbing into cellphone, 'But you left me! You left me!' I wanted to tell her anyone gone away needs to be gone, and she has all she needs in herself. But instead I muttered a prayer for her since who knows what to say to the aggrieved
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It may be that the most deliberate blows I took in my life wounded the perpetrators in some way more than me, for the inflicters of pain live in a world whose chief currencies are brutality & lies. Dare to recover & stay happy. It’s guaranteed to piss somebody off.
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This Flanney O'Connor film rocked my lit'rary soul! on PBS March 23rd!
"Flannery O'Connor is one of the writers least afraid to look at the darkness."
"Flannery" premieres March 23 at 8/7c on
@PBS
.
@FlanneryFilm
#AmericanMastersPBS
#FlanneryOConnor
#Writer
#Novelist
#WomensHistoryMonth
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#WritingTip
7: Read! Reading will not ‘pollute’ your pristine talent. It will save you time and help to keep your standards high. Without reading, the head becomes an echo chamber that can only hear itself.
#Read
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Ban guns, and when gun owners get upset, we all send them thoughts & prayers? Sheer genius....
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34 years ago today I woke still drunk with an invisible axe in my forehead & a toddler on my hip, thinking I cldn’t go on. So many strangers (living & dead) loved me & lit the way. Thnx baby Dev,to my sober Mother & drunk Daddy, to Lecia & Case & all the topless dancers.
🫀🙏🏻
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Yup, I grumble at the MTA, then during
#PrideMonth2018
there’s a public service announcement against bigotry & for
#LoveLoveLove
. Dang skippy!
#NYCPride
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“When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.”
― Czeslaw Milosz
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In the middle of a miserable stretch in my last memoir, after I’d thrown out 1200 pages, I called DeLillo & sobbed out, ‘I’m writing a bad book!’
And he said coolly, ‘Who doesn’t?’
It soothes me to think of his having said that....
#WritingTips
#WritingLife
#AmWriting
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@Palvashits
@NewYorker
that’s about 2% of what happened. tried to buy a gun. kicked me. climbed up the side of my house at night. followed my son age 5 home from school. had to change my number twice, and he still got it. months and months it went on
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#WritingTip
17. Believe your editor. Your workshop does not ‘misunderstand’ your radical genius. As
@StephenKing
says: Write with the door closed and edit with it open. If they don’t get it, ask yourself what’s in your head that’s left off the page.
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You cannot open a flower with a sledgehammer. Be gentle with yourself today....
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Overheard in voting line: ‘How long have you been waiting?’
And the woman hollers, ‘Four years!’
Applause across the country.....
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Pope Francis did the most radical thing. He told a young,
#gay
, sex abuse survivor, ‘God made you like this....be happy with who you are.’ Jesus taught
@Pontifex
love is only power worth having. (Read Building a Bridge by
@JamesMartinSJ
)
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Banning abortion doesn't stop abortion. It stops safe, legal abortion. I grew up when women died or lost their wombs in back rooms or had babies at 12 & 13 after rapes & entered lifelong cycles of poverty.
#ProChoice
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I regret nothing I ever gave anybody. Even love unrequited is as much gift for the lover as for the beloved.
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Writing tip
#6
Make a time to write & stick to it. When my son was a baby & I had 3 jobs plus writing, it was 4 or 5 in the am, & sometimes, I was so whipped, I sat over books that inspired me while the cursor blinked for 60-90 minutes before he started to cry. Suit up and show up
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My son’s daughter (18 months) stopped & waved at every robin & squirrel in the park, then held up her arms so she could bury her face in lilac blossoms & inhale (deep like trying to snort the whole tree). She’s the teacher in this deal: hands empty, heart full.
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We tell stories in order to live. -- Joan Didion RIP
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I am living proof that it’s possible to begin life profoundly, suicidally unhappy and yet find great joy in being alive.
#Meditate
#Meditation
#Pray
#Poetry
#ServeOthers
#Therapy
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JOB INTERVIEW
'What's yr greatest weakness?' 'Honesty'
'I don't think that's a weakness'
'I don't give a shit what you think'
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The bad things that befall us no doubt wind up building us up—the old Hemingway saw about gaining power in the broken places. But suffering also jacks up your compassion quotient & softens you. That’s where real power hides—figuring out you’re doomed to love no matter the cost.
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Thrilled to hear
#LouiseGluck
took the poetry Nobel. In grad school, I told her if I had a choice between being a poet & being happy, I’d choose the latter, and she said, ‘Oh don’t worry. You don’t have that choice.’ Felt like a blessing. All honor to her!
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#WritingTip
#9
Don’t waste a reader’s time w show-offy embellishment. Once you start stapling sequins on sentences to frou-frou the page up without deepening or advancing your tale, the reader’s reaching for her cell phone. Don’t pick out wallpaper: build the house.
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Praise God!
@MosabAbuToha
has been released & is with his family!!! Did we do this with our hearts❤️😱. Now let's free every civilian noncombatant illegally detained every dang where!!!
Again, I know Mosab is grateful for yr prayers! (No Gaza is not free but Mosab's with beloveds
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#WritingTip
10. Revise. My first drafts could get sold as tranquilizers at an insomiacs’ convention (i.e. I am sad, the end, by Mary Karr). By honing that notion—unpacking details, refining setences—a few books have bloomed into being. My writing secret comes in one word: again.
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#WritingTip
Mine what you know, not whatever lit’rary vein you see others pickaxing out. Your singular you-ness holds the treasure. As Faulkner said, ‘I discovered my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about & that I’d never live long enough to exhaust it.’
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Overheard: Addiction is giving up everything for one thing. Recovery is giving up one thing for everything.
#Addiction
#Recovery
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On my odd little NYC block just ran into a) Jonathan Franzen b) Malcolm Gladwell when I was en route to see c) Philip Roth. Why cldnt I run into a) Zadie Smith and b) Hilary Mantel en route to see c) Toni Morrison?The lords of literature reminding me it's still a man's world....
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Overheard: 'The hardest part of raising children is the first fifty years.'
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Happy Daddy Day to all you big daddies. Mine used to blow warm Camel smoke in my ear when it hurt, and because he most often dressed me, I still step into dresses like a man pulling on his britches. All honor to the papas!
#FathersDaySpecial
#FathersDay
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