Quotes from Mary Gaitskill

Ho fatto cose che sembrano autodistruttive tutta la vita. Ma in realtà non avevo nessuna intenzione di distruggermi. Ho sempre saputo dov'era il limite. Fino ad ora.

This late-adolescent camaraderie gave their time at Meadow a fraught emotional quality that was like the shimmering fullness of a bead of water before it falls. They were all about to scatter and become different from one another, and this made them exult in their closeness and alikeness.

I don't know who these people are, he said, or why you would care about their opinion. But there is nothing sick or worthless about you. You are a lovely spirit.

Maybe it would be better to hold her winglike shadow safe in the lock of his memory than to touch the breathing girl and lose her.

Maybe, she thought, this experience would be good. It would probably be improving to focus on the problems of others for a change.

She couldn't tell if she was just pulling anything available into her sadness.

like people were all runny and liquid, running over this surface and that, looking for a container to hold everything in place, trying one thing, then the next, incessantly looking for the right one. Except the containers were only big enough for one personality trat at a time; you had to grab on to one trait, bring it out for a while, then put it back and pull out another one. For a while, we were loving; then we were alienated and angry, then ironic, then depressed.

Art is only good at the moment it's done. After that it's dead. It's just so much dead shit. Artists are like people trying to hoard their shit.

Anne Frank's diary made a very big impression on me at age 12 or so.

Something like riding a horse - which I've recently started doing - requires courage, especially for me, as I started out being actually scared of horses.

It's true that your environment influences how you write.

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 think it actually started in my late thirties. I started changing psychologically, and it was difficult to translate that into my writing.

Between my hatred of mall shopping and my mother's firm ideas about how a girl should dress, my style choices were pretty unenthusiastic: plaid skirts or whatever empire-waisted thingamabob was on sale at Sears.

I think a lot of writing, or a lot of young writers, especially, hold themselves back unnecessarily because they're so upset about the idea that they might be sentimental or so concerned about being criticized that way or even being that way that they just shy away from any strong expression or emotion.

I believe that the truest parts of people can be buried, and for many different reasons.

There is a sense in which we have - like, I go in to teach a class; I may be somewhat different than I would be talking to you, although it's related because it's public. I'm very different with my roommate or my lover or my cats. But I don't know if that means you're acting, really, if you're being truthful.

Writing requires an intense inner focus, and sometimes you need to express outward, physically or socially.

Stories mimic life like certain insects mimic leaves and twigs.

Somebody once said to me if you want to be understood, don't write fiction.

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.

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.

You can't tell an 18-year-old to keep it down and turn off Britney Spears or whatever it is that they listen to.

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.