Mary Gaitskill Quotes

I wanted to communicate and connect. I simply didn't seem able to do it.

Mary Gaitskill

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I figure that that has a ten year cycle. At the end of that ten years, I began to get worried that I would run into what is known as the writer's block, the feeling of not being able to do these things.

  

  A. E. van Vogt
  • Feeling
  • Years
  • End

• There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'

  

  Abraham Lincoln
  • Time
  • Truth
  • Remember

• Whenever I have even a spare second, I'm in the kitchen whipping up a batch of cookies. I make a mean batch of chocolate chippers.

  

  Karlie Kloss
  • Up
  • Kitchen
  • Chocolate

• I'm pretty much a thrift shop gal. Flea markets on Sundays.

  

  Zoe Kravitz
  • Pretty
  • Much
  • Thrift

• Sometimes we have to take on jobs that we don't love, and I always encourage any creative person to use those as the fuel to do the things that you do love to do, even if they don't pay.

  

  Dan Bucatinsky
  • Person
  • Creative
  • Jobs

• I was afraid the other musicians might want to present themselves too much, though I see in the coverage I've received of the album that the musicians got wonderful reviews for their contributions and abilities. I think the four musicians played freely within my limits.

  

  Eberhard Weber
  • Present
  • Musicians
  • Limits

• A lot of reality TV is repellent, but that doesn't diminish the qualities of some of the people who take part. There are decent people in there who have no alternatives.

  

  Val McDermid
  • People
  • Reality
  • Take

• I guess I've always liked the idea of being an artist.

  

  Larry Rivers
  • Always
  • Artist
  • Idea

• Leadership is one of the things I really strive to excel in in my life.

  

  Nate Parker
  • Life
  • Leadership
  • My Life

• All national histories are partisan and designed to give us a good conceit of ourselves.

  

  T. E. Hulme
  • Good
  • Give
  • Ourselves

• I like a man who can build things. Whittle me something out of wood and I'm sold.

  

  Rachel Bilson
  • Man
  • Me
  • Like

• Between the desireAnd the spasmBetween the potencyAnd the existenceBetween the essenceAnd the descentFalls the Shadow .

  

  T. S. Eliot
  • Shadow

• Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy of effort. In spite of much complexity, they perform reliably. Witness the humble typewriter, or the movie camera, or the automobile.

  

  Vannevar Bush
  • Great
  • Movie
  • Effort

• We do not need French post-structuralism, whose pedantic jargon, clumsy convolutions, and prissy abstractions have spread throughout academe and the arts and are now blighting the most promising minds of the next generation. This is a major crisis if there ever was one, and every sensible person must help bring it to an end.

  

  Camille Paglia
  • Help

• If you want to get technical about it, Rocky couldn't carry my jockstrap.

  

  Larry Holmes
  • Rocky

• Dust had dimmed only a fraction, not enough. Decay had brushed with its rotten fingers not nearly all it should. It was an enchanted sweet, stuck in the throat of time.

  

  Tanith Lee
  • Time
  • Sweet

• The land of scholars and the nurse of arms.

  

  Oliver Goldsmith
  • Nurse

• A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.

  

  W. H. Auden
  • Writing
  • Mother
  • Political

• It is preposterous that the current members of the United States Senate and all of their predecessors for more than 200 years haven't been able to read the Constitution and do what it says.

  

  John Jay Hooker

• If you make a wrong move with explosives, it could be deadly. If you're there when they blow up the beach, you get blown up, too. So you need to get your job done correctly... then pull the fuse with enough lag time for you to clear the area completely and get picked up by the small boats.

  

  Jack Ramsay
  • Up
  • Time
  • Done

• I have the responsibility of over four million people, and I am in a position to do good, to be able to bring about a new life for my people, and I will continue to move in that direction. It's a burden, but it needs to be done, and you have to have the courage and wisdom to see it through.

  

  Abdullah II of Jordan
  • People
  • Life
  • Good

• Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

  

  Leon Trotsky

• So usually even if you like a sentence or a story or something, it won't come out that way - it'll come out years later, and in a different way, and you don't really control that.

  

  Keren Ann
  • Different
  • Control

• I wanted to communicate and connect. I simply didn't seem able to do it.

  

  Mary Gaitskill