YouSaid · the spoken record

Mary Karr

lines on the record: 113
first: 2024-06-11
most recent: 2024-06-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, but I mean, if I were to hunt, I would hunt with a gun, but it's funny, one of my best friends is a young writer named Phil Lamarsh, who's one of those guys who stocks his freezer with bow and arrow kill venison. And he called me this week and said a very interesting, he'd just kill a deer. And he said, you know, the longer I hunt, you know, the only thing I hate about it is the killing.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know those Cavalina hogs are fun to shoot. I'm sorry to say it. I'm embarrassed to say it. I have shot a Havilina Hog, so I'm anti gun, but pro hunting.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lady at my drugstore who my pharmacist who they were all out of the pneumonia vaccine, I get pneumonia a lot. And she went out of her way to call me and say, you know, I got you the pneumonia. If you can come in right now, that we had a cancellation. I can do just kindnesses, moments of kindness, but also. And awareness of God. A lot of people feel it in nature. I feel a little bit in Central Park, which is all the nature I have.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's it The prayer journal, I don't really, I only write, like actually write, and it mostly kind of looks like a list. Do you know what I'm saying? It's mostly like a list of things.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, I have a crush on a ton this guy who's on TV every day, and it tickles me to see him is kind of a little thrill. It's a little thrill to see him. It really is. It's so stupid But it's also, it makes me feel like a child. It makes me feel like I'm in junior high school. And so there's something innocent and sweet about it. Also the fact that he's so dorky I like. I just like that.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, if you're a liberal, you're like a nut and you watch this way, other people watch other things. So he's this really nerdy kind of maths goop guy who wears like khakis and a really like a clip on tie and has this really bad haircut. And I just have a complete crush on him. I just crush on him. I don't even like young men. I don't. I really don't. You have to have some, you know, you have to have a some hair coming out of your ears for me to want to date you but this guy just does it for me. Just like him. I'm just like him.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ah, you know, tomorrow I'd like to be more patient, help me to be more patient. So, what it does is it made those moments of gratitude, and I also keep kind of a list or journal of those things and a prayer journal daily. I don't keep a journal journal, but I keep a daily prayer journal, and I just will kind of highlight some of those things. Like for me today, right now, Steve Kronaki's haircut, which I know he does himself, I don't know. The guy who delivers the big map thing on MSNBC. I just like the guy. I just like him. Every time I see him, I feel like... I'm spending the night at my girlfriend's house, and he's her nerdy brother who's like secretly hot.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was I in, and you close your eyes and you try to review your day literally like you're watching a movie. And where you see moments of grace or luck or even something, you know, a good sandwich, something yummy to eat, you're supposed to savor those moments and occupy those moments. And it's a very body-oriented exercise. You're supposed to smell. What do you smell? What do you hear? What do you taste? How do your clothes feel? You're supposed to really recreate that moment in a sensory way. And thank God for the grace or the gift of that. And then you kind of press play again and you see moments where you turned away from God or your best self didn't act and you say, I want to do better next time. Instead of snapping at the robo call voice, snapping at Siri because she doesn't understand me and love me for myself alone, you know, to just.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that means when the car breaks down instead of thinking, you know, your cruel fate, you know, has come to hurt you. So what you do actually, Tim, is in the morning I do a prayer and meditation thing for 20 minutes before I do like centering prayer for maybe, I don't know five, six, seven minutes and then I read a scripture and I meditate on the scripture. And then I have a bunch of people I pray for. I have a list of people I pray for and things I pray for. Then at night I do something called the examine of conscience where you, it's not like going every day making a list of good things that happened or whatever and then repenting for the bad things. It sounds like that, but it's not that. What it is, is you kind of press play on the recorder of your day. So you think, I woke up. And so what did I do? Where was I?”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I became a Catholic. I became a Catholic and I do something, I practice a kind of spirituality called Ignatian spirituality, which when you become a Jesuit, you go away to the Jesuit place or the Jesuit Macon place. You do, and then they give you these 30-day exercises. And the purpose of the exercises is to find God in all things. So like this election, which is just turned around to look at my screen to see if we had a new president. So this election, for instance”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can there be a God? Because look at the Holocaust. She's like, God didn't do the Holocaust, people did the Holocaust. Like, what are you mad at God for? People did that. God didn't do. That has nothing to do with God. So that's how my prayer life started. It's bizarre story.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not even making this up. And I would get on my knees and say, thank you for keeping me sober. I would still like some money. Three weeks later, after I started, this is a true story, and you can look it up. I get a phone call from a guy who says he's from this foundation. He's giving me $35,000 that I'd never applied for or asked for, that somebody just put me up for. And I so thought it was, I thought it was my friend George playing a trick on me and said, you know, fuck you, George. And I hang the phone up. And the guy calls back and he asks me on, you know, the speaker phone, you can hear people laughing maniacally. So I've never gotten money from prayer again. And then Joan the bone says, well, you must believe that there's some sort of God. I was like, no, because they were meeting to give me that prize before I had stopped drinking and started praying. And she said, Jesus Christ. And I would also talk to her all the time. I'd say,”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To stand it, just to get through the fucking day. That's what I'm praying for. And she said, okay, well, you've got to pray for what you want. What do you want? I said, I made $9,000 this year. I would like some money, please. She said, well, why don't you pray for money? I'm like, you can't pray for that. She's like, well, why not? I said, okay. So I would literally get on my knees in the morning and say, keep me sober. I would like some money.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the bone, and Joan would tell me things like I was such an ingrate. She'd say, You have to make a gratitude list. And so she called me and said, what's on your gratitude list? I would say, I have all my limbs. She'd say, no, okay. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to make a gratitude list every day this month for every letter of the alphabet. And you're going to call me and read it to me. I said, shut the fuck up. I'm not going to do that. She's like, yes, you are, or else, you know, like, I won't talk to you anymore. I'd be like, okay. So I just started trying, I just started trying instead of sitting there with my arms crossed and my lower lips stuck out and my baseball cap pulled down over my eyes. I just started trying shit that people who were happier than me suggested I should try. It was so simple. And so one of the things I said to her, she said, you've got to pray for what you want. What are you praying for? I said, I pray to stand it. Yeah, not to kill myself, not to get in.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Joan the bone. God, I loved her. She was so great. She was a kind of girl who lived in Alaska and would go to the bar when it was like 50 below in a tutu. She was just like a badass. Like she was just, and she was a Harvard social theorist too, I've got to tell you. She was just all that.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sit there for a moment, and so I began to get a space in my body, and I began to get not the voice of God. I would call it, I would have some leanings like I would be thinking, I should have just killed myself, like literally this is what I should have killed myself. My husband would marry some nice girl who wore barettes and my son would have this great mother and his life would be better if I weren't there. And I would hear this voice in my head that was like, you need a sandwich. Why don't you get a sandwich? Why don't you make yourself like the biggest sandwich you can make? And I'd be like, ooh, great idea. Like I just started to have these small, good ideas that were not like anything I'd ever heard when I was afraid before. Yeah, then I had all these crazy spiritual experiences and like one of the things I had this great sponge.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they have ginger ale. They have a jack. They have a way to tow my car. They give Deb potato chips. And it was just like, you know, all I have to do is just find some space in my body and just wait for a minute. And so I started to notice things happening when I wasn't bent over the day like a dog over like a bone that was about to be stolen. You know, like that when I could just, I could just like.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Memorize the bad news and spewed it out all day. And I remember that day, it was the sun was setting. I just got out on the side of the road, got Dev out of his car seat, and the sun was going down. And he was looking at me afraid that I was going to be like angry. And I just sat there and he said, he was hungry. And I didn't have anything to eat in the car. And I'm sitting there. And I said, let's just look at the sunset a minute and then we'll go, we'll walk and we'll get some help. And we were just sitting there looking at the sunset and this truck pulls up with these Goomba guys from this 12-step meeting.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eat this. Don't eat that. Call him. Hate him like just these moments like in the middle of my chest would be like this broad expanse of quiet. And I remember one particular day or little shitty car broke down. My kid was a toddler and he was, I had to pee. We were on the road. I didn't break down. I had a flat and didn't have a spare, a working spare. It was rush hour. We were on Memorial Driver trying to get home. And I just, in that moment, what I normally would have done, you know, I would have been there, you know, like throwing the jack around and trying to get the car jacked up and in a state of indignant fury that I didn't believe in God, but I believe that there was fate that had doomed me to misery and that the guy with the jaguar would always get my parking place right before I pulled in. And I believed I had a head that had”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To sit in that silence with all your fears and all your self-doubt is so scary and hard. If you have a big loud head like I do and like I have a big inner life and mine never has anything good to say. It thinks it can kill me and go on living without me. Something started to happen. I would have these moments of quiet. And the only way I can describe it is it was south of my neck. It was like in the middle of my chest. If I was living my life with my head like gammering at me like a chihuahua all day, do that. Don't that, stupid bitch. Put that down. Pick that up. Go over there. I mean, it was just.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just get on your knees. Just say help me stay sober in the morning. Get on your knees at night and say, Thank you for helping me stay sober. And so I'd be like, okay, so I get on my knees, help me stay sober. And I'd say, thank you for helping me stay sober. Well, some weird thing started to happen. I mean, sometimes I would literally shoot the finger at the light fixture because I just thought, I hate this. Know what's terrifying about praying is the loneliness of it. I always tell people, young women I sponsor, you show more faith praying when you have never prayed before than any nun.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On your knees and pray, and there was this great heroin addict recovering heroin addict. Janice hit this halfway house where I did volunteer work. I drove people to meetings, basically, and would pick people up and drive them to meetings. A lot of disabled people. And Jane, I said, just get on your knees. And I'm like, Janice, you know, what kind of God wants me to grovel and go, oh, God, you're so great. And she said, you don't do it for God, you asshole in that Boston accent. You don't do it for God, you asshole. I'm like, well, who am I doing it for? It's like, you're doing it for yourself.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It looks like a poker chip. And so, like you get one the first day you go and then you get one at 30 days and 60 days and 90 days. So this was for me an epic accomplishment. I mean, there was no time that I ever ran the 100-yard dash in that was as important to me as that 90-day chip. And I was happy that I was sober. I felt better. I was sleeping better. My kid was better. Everything was better. And I had to give this poetry reading at Harvard College. And I was nervous. I'd never given a reading without drinking. The reading went okay. I was teaching at a bunch of places, including one class there, and I went out with some of my students. And the next thing I know, it's three o'clock in the morning. And I'm my car spinning out on store drive in Boston. And I'm going towards this concrete. And I somehow didn't crash the car and I somehow got home. And so at that point, everybody had been saying, you know, you've got to.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Beer and I tried drinking only alone. I tried drinking only with other people. I tried drinking only wine. I tried drinking with food. I tried drinking weekends. I mean, I just somehow I had cross some line where I just couldn't stop drinking. And I went to get help and I went to satin church basements and I hated everybody I saw who was sober. I just hated them. They just seemed like, you know, the guy's sealing incense at the airport. I just didn't like them. They just didn't look fun. And I just, they were so nice too. It was like getting to Minnesota. They're hi, you know, welcome. I'd be like, oh, God, I hate these people. And finally, the last time I drank, the last night I drank, I had gotten together for like, it was the longest amount of time sober I'd had since I was 15. And I'd gotten together 90 days sober by going and, you know, sitting in church basements and talking to people who were sober.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it started off. I think poems are my first prayers, the ones that I read, like I said, I felt less lonely. So I started praying not out of any virtue. I didn't believe in God. I had no religious training whatsoever. When I was a little girl, people would say, would talk about Santa Claus or the Easter Bounty. I thought they were kidding. I thought they don't really believe this horse shit. I mean, I figured out pretty early on, you know, by the time I was like six or seven people were serious that they prayed when people weren't looking at them. I couldn't believe it. It was shocking to me. And Daddy would say, well, you know, folks ignorant, you know what you're going to do. So I had not a religious bone in my body, but I did notice when I tried to stop drinking that I couldn't, like that, I tried to stop drinking for two or three years. And I tried by myself and I tried drinking only.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His name was Jack. We called him Jacqueline because of a sad tooth thing he had and because we were not ones to stand on ceremony. And he said, you have had this job since the 11th grade and you're 50 years old and you have an ambition deficit disorder My yardstick. So, no, but he would say, Jack Larry, he'd say, Don't call me that no more. I'm like, what do you want me to call you? Like, that's your name, dude. That's been your name since you were 15. That's your name.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I'm Prayer. I was an atheist my whole life and I got sober in 1989. And believe me, I drank my share. I did my part. I remember some guy I went to high school with telling me when my mother was still alive, I was home. And he says, you don't even drink anymore? You don't even smoke pot. I was like, no, Jac' lantern. I don't do that stuff anymore. It's like, why? I was like, well, it just didn't agree with me. You know, it made me do things I didn't want to do. And he says, I just think you're a quitter. I think you're a quitter. I just think you gave up. I mean, what is smoking pot going to do? You're never going to like rob anybody's television or anything. I said, well, that's true. That's true enough, Jacqueline. But you have had this job pumping gas since the 11th grade.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the great thing about them is that if you get on an airplane or you're going along, you sort of know what you're reading. But I've also been doing this. A poet named Stanley Kunitz, who was a poet laureate in 1978 or something, told me to do this. So I've been doing this since 1978. Also, every time I give a lecture, I put the quotes I use in the lecture on index cards. And so I have like, you know, I've been teaching for 40 years. I mean, I have 40 years of index cards with quotes on them. It's oddly satisfying. I don't know what it is. It's like a sit-up you do. It's like a push-up you do. It's something you don't really, I often don't look back on. I think it's in the writing down. I think it's in the practice. And kind of, it's like an altar. You're making an altar for yourself every day.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know what was beautiful? I went into, I was going into get a pastry for a friend of mine who was visiting from London. I got him one. I thought I'd bring him a pastry when I came out. But when I walked into the bakery, he was looking at the sky, you know, with a curious look. You know, he was thinking, like, isn't there a door? Isn't there a door number three? Is there another It might just be a door number three, but mostly what I write down are pieces of language or things, poems that I read, paragraphs, anything so that you're just constantly copying in long hand you can't type it. You're constantly copying. Sort of beautiful, you're constantly guzzling beauty. You're guzzling the beautiful language so that you're kind of steeped in it, you know, like a fruitcake in good brandy.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, things you read. So you might copy poems, you might copy something you overheard on the street. There was a guy standing on my street. This is like a couple of years ago when I first moved into this apartment screaming murder or suicide at the top of his lungs. And everybody was walking around the street walking around him. It was early in the morning, and I walked up to him and I said, Excuse me, sir. He was screaming murder, suicide, murder or suicide. And I went up to him and said, sir, isn't there like a third alternative? Like, isn't there a door number three? And”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of practice things, a lot of, I think it's important as a writer or as in anything to develop habits. I mean, you talk about this for our body, four hour work week. You've developed a lot of practices in your life to shape your life so that you're kind of operating to constantly be growing and developing. And so things like keeping a commonplace book, just keeping a notebook where you write down beautiful pieces of language.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even these fine minds of these young people, very alert and paying attention in their first class and wanting to get everything right and do well, misremember. And what's more, what I want them to think about is how they are not just perceiving things, but beaming the world, the landscape into being with whoever they are inside. It's important as a writer of anything to realize what kind of filters you're strapping on that prevents you from seeing what's going on.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, have those perfect memories. I remember one kid often they're musicians. This kid was a jazz saxfilm player who was very famous in Brooklyn for giving these amazing house parties. I think he made a living giving house parties for like, I don't know, years. So this kid had this amazing memory. He got, we had a script and he remembered the script exactly. He remembered what George had on. He remembered where we stood. He remembered that I backed up every step. And then when he wrote it, he wrote it exactly as it had happened. He didn't miss anything. And he said, George was the aggressor, but I wonder what she'd done to make him act that way. I guess the purpose of the exercise is for you to realize that you remember through a filter of who you are. Memory is not a computer, it's not a perfect storage system. Obviously, we...”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Call, how long between each call and ask them to guess things or remember things about time and some people he calls three times, some people will say he called once, some people four times. So all those details are very influenced by who they are. The young woman was sickle cell anemia will have this enormous compassion for me because I'll say I have to leave my phone on. I'm waiting for medical results. And she'll assume I'm waiting to hear if I have some awful ailment. And she sees George as a complete beast and me as this woman perhaps ill who dragged herself to class while everybody else in the class thinks, what a diva she's answering her phone in the middle of class. She can't wait an hour to get medical results. I mean, come on. So there are always people in class who have”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up in my head is down, and I am doing every conciliatory gesture I can think of. And people will say, you know, she stood her ground like a bulldog or she had military strength facing off against him. And one year I did it with my student assistant who was an undergraduate, just a beautiful young track star Betsy. You know, Betsy just threw her papers up in the air and was screeching at me. Well, you know, she's this kid and here I am, this professor with, you know, fancy clothes in a position of power. So people would in that class of undergraduates assume that I had done horrible things to Betsy that had in one class there was a young woman, one of the ruses I set up is that I leave my cell phone on so I can start to argue with George before he comes in and then ask the students, you know, how often did he...”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, good Feel so much better. Just tell me to go fuck myself. And then we ask the students to write. So let's say there are 17, 18 students in this class, 20, somewhere between 15 and 22. And they're all smart and they're all young. They were all incredibly juiced on adrenaline and cortisol because they were scared. And it's a public scene and they don't really know each other that well and they don't know us that well. So they're all extremely alert. They're hyper vigilant. And we ask them to write down what happens. And everybody writes something just a little different. Interestingly, people will describe me in very aggressive terms. Like, even though I'm the one backing up and I'm saying, well, I can clear out during the break, George, but like I don't understand why you're so upset. And he'll say, you don't understand why I'm so, I mean, and he walks forward and I'm back.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In front of all the students, and it's for them, it's the first day of school, and it's like having their parents fight. And I script it so that I say only nice conciliatory things. I back up. He walks forward. He's bigger than I am. And then it ends with him like throwing the papers up and telling me to go fuck myself or something or telling me to go hang. Maybe I don't know if you can say the F word. Can you say the F word?”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, you're thinking when I teach my memoir class. Yeah. Well, I used to do. I used to do this thing. Yeah, that's so funny. I used to do this thing where I would stage a fight in my class with someone who was opposite from me. So let's say, you know, like my colleague George Saunders, who is just the sweetest guy, I can't even tell you. I was in the car with him once and there was a bug on his shirt. And I was like, George, there's a big beeline or shirt. And he'd be like, well, he has to be somewhere. You know, I'd be like, kill it. And he's like, this Tibetan Buddhist with this amazing practice, you know, just the sweetest guy. So George comes in and starts arguing with me that my classroom is, in fact, his classroom.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I do it. I wish they would just give me a wand and I get to pick all my people. But interestingly, I've been teaching their gosh, 30 years, something like that. I only teach in the fall and I go and I commute from New York City. So we do it based on the work. We do it solely based on the writing. And George Saunders, my colleague George Saunders, had gotten so has gotten so famous that he attracts a lot of people and have a lot of people who teach their Arthur Flowers. Juno Diaz has taught there. We just have gotten up to 1,200 applications for 12 positions.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I couldn't. I used to make a joke about an unkind joke. I'd say if you're not a virgin, when you get here, you will be when you leave. It was just everybody was so damn nice. Oh my God, I'd never seen such nice people in my life. And still, I got there and I did extremely well for two years, and I won all these prizes. And then I dropped out. I couldn't handle the prosperity. I couldn't handle the success. It took me a while”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To college in Minnesota. And I mean, it's just that was the other thing. Everybody in Minnesota is so damn nice. Have you ever been there?”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know people's teeth are great and nobody's missing any digits or anything. Nobody's, everybody looks so amazing and everything's so beautiful and you're like, God, I've never seen anything like this. Golly. And so you would think everything would have been great, but as you know, when you have a lot of trauma growing up, you bring the darkness with you. So I had this idea after I was hitchhiking and I got scared. I had to went to jump out of this guy's car. It was a Volkswagen that had no backseat and had a bunch of garbage in it. And I pulled up on the handle of the door and it just went floppy round and round and round. Like it was locked and I couldn't get out. And so the window was open, stuck open, wouldn't go up, wouldn't go down. And I stuck my arm out the side of the window and opened it from the outside and jumped out and went down this embankment on the side of the road. I was really scared. I was, you know, how those moments of trauma are. I was scared like I had been when I was a little kid and there were bullets flying around my house. And I thought, I know, you know, I'll go.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The side of the road, and it's interesting because there were six of us who lived in that house when I left home. And of the six, four went to jail. And two of those were dead before they were 20. And only me and one other guy who's still my best friend, Dooney, wound up getting sober. And we both kind of made it, quote-unquote, him in construction in Southern California and me doing whatever it is that I'm supposed to be doing. So I was scared. I was scared by how dark things that I brought the darkness with me. You know, you get to Southern California from where I grew up and you're like, where has all this been? You know, everybody's orthodontered and.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wasn't defiant. I wanted to please people. I mean, I think I had a lot of jobs. Like I had one of those hairnet wearing jobs at the food service where I had to go in at like four in the morning and like cook scrambled eggs and wash dishes and stuff. And so I think in some ways I had to organize my time, but I had been living with a bunch of drug dealers before I went to college out in Southern California. moved out there initially we lived in cars and stuff and We got some couple of us for slinging dope, mostly Pod and psychedelics, although one guy had robbed a drugstore and I was hitchhiking one day from Laguna Beach to San Clemente where my friends were surfing. And I got picked up by a guy who really scared me. I thought he was going to rape me and had to jump out.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I actually think, I don't know how I got in, I don't know how I got in. It was clearly a mistake. I made a D in art, you know, my senior year, and my mother was painter. So, I mean, all I had to do was slap art on something and I would have gotten, you know, a B and I couldn't handle the pressure. It was too hard. So I don't know how I got to college. But once I got to college, I've got to say I really. Everybody else was complaining about their parents and the, I don't know, that you couldn't weren't supposed to smoke cotton or whatever they were mad about. I was like, this is great. This is all these people read books and they'll talk to you about them. And I made straight A's and I got a scholarship and it was just shocking to me that I might succeed at something, you know?”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I actually think my misbehavior that got me in so much trouble and made him hate me so much, I once had an algebra teacher revealed to me. He really is after you, like you're not paranoid, like he's, he's really, he wants you out of here.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't stand up for the American flag. I mean, I don't know. I thought I was calling Kaepernick or something. It didn't win me any friends. Let me just say that. But I later found out when I got to my school and I had to have a lot of jobs to go there because it was a private school. It was McAllister College. It's a very good school. And I later found out that the assistant principal of my high school who had thrown me out a lot for things like my skirt was too short. One time he threw me out for not having a bra on and I said, what makes you think I don't have a bra on? And then he called in the gym teacher to look under my shirt and confirm, in fact, I didn't have a bra on. So I was just, I was a pain in his ass. And I later found out that he called McAllister and told these people in the admissions office that I was a bad citizen, that I wouldn't stand up for the pledge of allegiance and stuff. Well, they hear this old redneck.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wrote an essay contest when I was in high school. I remember, I think it was from the National Council of Teachers of English. And I had some professors actually my mother had gone back to graduate school and got me a recommendation from this teacher of Chinese history who felt me up, sexually assaulted me in his office and then wrote me a recommendation. So maybe that helped. Actually, what I think helped when I look back on it was I opposed the Vietnam War and I wore black armbands on moratorium day. And that's the kind of thing that where I grew up, you know, I remember my coach, the football coach, pinning me up physically, like pinning me up against the lockers by the front of my shirt and holding me against the lockers and threatening me essentially to take my black armband off. So I did things like.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Early 20th century, maybe 1920s to 1950 journalist guy. So I'm sorry, I don't cite him. I wish I could take credit for it. But yeah, all art should disturb the comfortable and comfort that's disturbed. And all therapy should and most foods, you know, it's not a bad goal to shoot for at the beginning of a day”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can remember little bits of it, but I remember these girls in my school just going, What are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense. And I'm like, what about it doesn't make... Any sense. You know, it's about its being spring. And she's like, Well, what is the mud lush is like, that's not even a word. I'm like, no, it's like muddy and luscious and delicious. And it's like, how is mud delicious? You know, it's like, no, like, y'all aren't getting it. And I thought they were messing with me. It seemed so obvious to me how great this was. So I learned to shut up about it very early, you know, by like third, fourth grade. I learned just don't, you like this stuff. Nobody else. Your mother likes it. Your sister likes it. Your daddy likes it. Nobody else is going to like it. Shut up.”
2024-06-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT