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

Koren Zailckas Boyfriends Ex Boyfriends Love Relationships Stoicism

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

Koren Zailckas Emotion Emotions Families Family Family Therapy Memoir Writing Craft Writing From The Heart Writing Life Writing Process Writing Style

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

Koren Zailckas Anger Anger Impressions Angry Break Up Break Ups Depression Sad But Funny Sadness

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

~ Koren Zailckas

Koren Zailckas Life And Living

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

Koren Zailckas Buddhism Hippie Hippies Metaphysics New Age Yoga

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 warmth and conversation, it's hard to tell what's responsible for producing emotion. What's responsible for the light-headed feeling? Is it the Molson, or the boy who's running his fingers through the ends of your hair? Are you chatty because you're drunk, or because you're connecting with someone on a level that you have never before experienced?

~ Koren Zailckas

Koren Zailckas Memoir

It's not rocking the boat, Dad. It's called communication. You're allowed to ask questions. Other people do it all the time. Other people don't live in fear of someone else's reactions. They don't relentlessly stress out about getting into trouble.

~ Koren Zailckas

Koren Zailckas Abuse Abusive Relationships Communication Skills

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

Koren Zailckas Alcoholism Irony

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

~ Koren Zailckas

Koren Zailckas Alcohol Moderation

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

~ Koren Zailckas

Koren Zailckas Alcohol College

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

~ Koren Zailckas

Koren Zailckas Alcohol

Even years from now, once I've stopped drinking, I will never stop trusting extremes. I will always believe that anything worth having is worth having in excess. The good things are worth hoarding until you have a cookie-fat ass, sex-aching loins, joy that fires through you like popping popcorn, or love, the weakness at the sight of some boy who makes your chest ache like indigestion. If it's good for you, it ought to be good for you in any amount, and you should track down every available bit of it. And if it's toxic, if it turns your liver into a hard little rock of scar tissue, or curls your memory at the edges like something burned in a fire, or makes your stomach flop, or your mind ache, or your personality contorted, you shouldn't buy into the bullshit about temperance.

~ Koren Zailckas

Koren Zailckas Black And White Excess Excessiveness Extreme Extremes Hoard Lack Of Moderation Moderation Passionate Life Too Little Too Much Too Much Of A Good Thing Worth

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

Koren Zailckas American Research Think

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 relation with anger. They think it's essential to get angry.

~ Koren Zailckas

Koren Zailckas Good Believe World

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

Koren Zailckas Positive Change Think