Mary Gaitskill Quotes
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The hard truth is that there are people who believe they're writers and work hard at it and are sincere about it, but they don't make it. You have to be prepared for that possibility.
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I wanted to communicate and connect. I simply didn't seem able to do it.
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For two people to satisfy everything each needs for their entire lives is a tall order. Some couples may be equipped to do this. Some are not.
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I think that with the proliferation of writing programs, people tend to forget that you also have to get used to working alone, and you have to be your own support.
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Stories mimic life like certain insects mimic leaves and twigs.
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Married, you're basically part of the herd, and that makes life easier in a lot of ways in terms of social support. But if you're not by nature a herd animal, you start to feel like you're passing.
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The appeal of perfume is that it is at once ephemeral and empowering. It creates a shimmering invisible armor that lingers in a room long after its wearer has gone and infuses our imagination with a subtle power, hinting at a hidden identity.
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I wasn't ever anybody who had a political thing against marriage, but I just thought, 'Why would I want to do that?'
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Perhaps it should be obvious: Adultery is a social threat that arouses raw anger and fear, which the bellicose then need to discharge rather than merely feel, traditionally on the philandering wife or the female home-wrecker.
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My parents had met in high school and married right after my father came back from World War II. They honeymooned in Paris and returned to that city when my father, in college on the G.I. Bill, was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship.
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I feel I'm often misunderstood by critics. People project a lot or exaggerate the subjective fragility simply because it's frightening to them.
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The two basic social identities were Normal and Greaser; although a few sophisticated girls wore peace signs, hippies didn't exist, and while a seminal punk band, Iggy and the Stooges, was playing in nearby Ann Arbor, punk didn't exist yet, either.
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Sometimes I write from the point of view of characters whom I would dislike as people, not as a perverse exercise, but because this cracks the story open and makes me see it in a way I would not see it naturally.
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I didn't start thinking about what I wanted to do professionally until I was 17. I was a hippie, but I did write.
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I don't know if I can say exactly what I seek in books, but one of them would be to deepen and expand my understanding of the world.
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I think that's the real reason, sometimes, that people talk about my stories as being scary, because if you compare what goes on in my stories to what goes on in popular movies and popular songs, it's very mild.
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I had really wanted adventure. At the time that I ran away, lots of kids ran away from home. It was something of a social phenomenon.
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When looking out the window and watching the water becomes a drama, then literally everything is a drama.
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The first person to blow up my fashion consciousness was a 14-year-old girl named Sandrine. She was the most beautiful human I had ever seen.
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Three writers together would be a nightmare of obstreperous self-consciousness.
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Sometimes I decide I don't want to write because it isn't the thing for me to be doing right then, and I go do something else.
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Somebody once said to me, 'If you want to be understood, don't write fiction.'
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On the rare occasions when my mother perfumed herself, she was going out, and so I rarely smelled those special scents up close on her body, except during kisses goodbye.
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I had a strong conviction that there was something out there in the world that was wonderful.