Mary Gaitskill Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I had a strong conviction that there was something out there in the world that was wonderful.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I think it actually started in my late thirties. I started changing psychologically, and it was difficult to translate that into my writing.
-
I wasn't ever anybody who had a political thing against marriage, but I just thought, 'Why would I want to do that?'
-
I wanted to communicate and connect. I simply didn't seem able to do it.
-
Three writers together would be a nightmare of obstreperous self-consciousness.
-
I feel I'm often misunderstood by critics. People project a lot or exaggerate the subjective fragility simply because it's frightening to them.
-
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.
-
Stories mimic life like certain insects mimic leaves and twigs.
-
A sad person who is so involved with his sadness that he mistakes it for reality will have a hard time seeing himself as anything but sad. For him, the sadness is not a feeling that he experiences - it is him.
-
When looking out the window and watching the water becomes a drama, then literally everything is a drama.
-
My first and strongest memories about perfume come from childhood, from my mother, and they are a complex blend of her private and public selves.
-
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.
-
Anne Frank's diary made a very big impression on me at age 12 or so.
-
It's scary to me to watch the world around us get less and less physical while in the imaginary world of pop culture, aggressive impulses and fear reactions are floridly, furiously stoked and indulged.
-
At 16, I was in Toronto and very shy and not hanging around with anyone who was intellectual in the slightest, so I didn't really have the means to discuss what I was seeing and feeling.
-
Where I grew up, in the Detroit area, there was a really good station. Sometimes you would hear songs for the first time on the radio, and if a really special song came on, somebody would turn it up, and everybody would just stop talking.
-
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.
-
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.