Mary Gaitskill Quotes
I didn't start thinking about what I wanted to do professionally until I was 17. I was a hippie, but I did write.

Quotes to Explore
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The scramble to get into college is going to be so terrible in the next few years that students are going to put up with almost anything, even an education.
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The sole ultimate factor in human decisions is physical force. This we must learn, however repugnant the idea may seem, if we are to protect ourselves and our institutions. Reliance on anything else is fallacious and ruinous.
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I was a hot-dog stand lady, I was an orphan housemother, I was a waitress 3 or 4 times. All of those jobs did not have good bosses. They basically told you what to do, when to do and when to hop. And I just didn't like that very much.
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I traveled a full two years with 'Language of Flowers.'
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I went into acting as psychotherapy, and it's still a work in progress.
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I want to be able, as days go by, always to look myself straight in the eye.
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Don't feel sorry for me. I've had a great life, great friends.
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When service members are discharged, we should express our gratitude for their profound personal sacrifice, not hand them a bill for their hospital food.
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Seasonal flu is now a pandemic that lasts for years and years because you've got so many people that it's jumping back between northern and southern hemispheres and moving itself around the world. By the time it gets back to where it started, it's changed sufficiently so that people are no longer immune.
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I am still shocking people today, and I don't know why. Is it because I'm a woman talking about sex and men? One magazine said that no one writes sex in the back of a Bentley better than Jackie Collins.
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I'm not terribly confrontational, but I've gotten better at holding my ground.
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Like in nature, I like things which are based on a few simple principles, even though their manifestation can be very rich.
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I have learned a lot from jazz. I compare good acting to jazz music. The more you study and prepare as an actor, the more equipped you are to live in the moment. Just like the gifted musicians in my dad's quartet, it takes a courageous actor to be free.
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Sometimes you look at a movie and you can see that the actor or actress said, 'I'm taking this onboard because I'm making a ton of money, and not because it's going to be something special.'
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Sexuality is who you are personally attracted to... But gender identity is who you are in your soul.
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In a kind of a way there's a bit of that happening now so we have to be careful to preserve our culture.
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It feels good when you come to a place like Oklahoma to charge up the batteries. I need that.
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People like to see showdowns.
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I'm fascinated by anything that deals with the unexplained. I love any show that totally makes me want to know more. How did they build these pyramids? Why did they find these carvings that look like spaceships?
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In time you may discover everything that can be discovered, and still your progress will only be progress away from humanity. The distance between you and them can one day become so great that your joyous cry over some new gain could be answered by an universal shriek of horror.
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My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter.
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Hopefully we'll figure out how to get 'Iron Man 2' going, and I'll be involved with that. You have got to outdo what you did before. So, if the last one took two years, we would need at least that to do what we are talking about or, at least, thinking about.
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What people don't understand about making a film is sometimes your experience on the film shapes who you are. You're gone to another country for five months, maybe more, there's training leading up to it... It's a whole life experience that people don't see because they just see the final product wrapped up in a couple hours. You don't see everything that happens around it. I think it's hard to say one movie or one thing; I think they all shape who you are.
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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.