Mary Gaitskill Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Even happy situations can easily start to feel miserable. So, I think that people who consider themselves sophisticated or who are in fact sophisticated have come to distrust stories that are uplifting or simply stories in which the characters get what they want in the end. Because in life, what you want is never the end.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Uplifting, Character, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Point of view changes so much as time goes on. And it's important to acknowledge that the truth is multifaceted. And yet that conversation has a very different meaning now because of this whole alternative facts thing, calling everything you don't like "fake news."

  Mary Gaitskill

  Fake, Important, Different

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I became very aware of how important it is to connect with children - possibly for the children, if they're in the mood for that - but certainly for the adults.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Children, Important, Mood

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• It was like everything that supported the relationship was coming from the outside. Judging by all the signs, we were a perfectly successful couple and John was an ideal husband for me - rich, blond, tall, sensitive, ad nauseam. But even worse, it seemed as if our most intimate conversations were based on what we were supposed to be saying, and what we were supposed to be. Nothing seemed to come directly from us.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Couple, Husband, Successful

  Mary Gaitskill (2012). “Bad Behavior: Stories”, p.95, Simon and Schuster

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• I don't have an opinion about whether or not politics should appear more in fiction or not, generally. I think politics are a part of life, but a part of life that most people don't think about very much, most of the time. Or, people think about it superficially and they talk about it superficially because they don't know very much.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Thinking, People, Opinion

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• That's why every society on the planet has very definite rules, ideas about how sex should be regulated, how sex should be expressed, what's okay, what's not okay. And I guess we do live in a place, and have for a long time, where there's more openness and there's more willingness to tolerate different kinds of behavior, but with that comes people creating other rules and other kinds of controls. It's always going to be a question of what's acceptable and what isn't and what's the danger point and what rouses people's contempt and what people are allowed to get away with.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Long, People, Different

  Source: www.elle.com

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• I think that politics in most people's lives expresses itself like that: indirectly, in half thought-out opinions and feelings. And sometimes through a connection with something that is very real. But we don't have the knowledge or language to speak about it.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Real, Thinking, Feelings

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I think politics are a part of life, so I have no resistance to it, but it's not something I set out to do.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• When you're writing a story, you're creating something of an artificial ending.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I think, life is miserable.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Thinking, Miserable

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• Most women at retirement have significantly less money than men, and they still get paid less than men. I'm sure that in my reptile brain I'm quite conscious of this.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Retirement, Men, Brain

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• People still think that a woman who doesn't have children or doesn't want children is really lacking in something. I've seen this over and over again in my life. I've had this thinking used against me repeatedly. I remember I had a therapist once, and I brought this up, and she said, "Well, I think women who don't have children feel very self-critical. They feel bad, so they think other people are critical in that way."

  Mary Gaitskill

  Children, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I think women who are very creative and giving members of society can be respected and accepted.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Thinking, Giving, Creative

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Sexuality is a place where people are very vulnerable and can be experiencing and embodying very raw forces that they don't really understand and there's a question of how much you should control and how much you should play with those and what those forces really are, how you really feel about them. That's perennial.

  Mary Gaitskill

  People, Vulnerable, Sexuality

  Source: www.elle.com

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• I think a woman who commits adultery, is not sympathetic in our culture - or in many cultures, let's face it.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Thinking, Culture, Adultery

  Source: www.elle.com

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• Adultery is like, here's the way it is, and here's exactly what you're supposed to do. It's like cheating at Monopoly. For me, it just doesn't apply to human relations. I mean, I use the word sometimes because it's fair and everybody knows what it means, but I find it a very irritating word.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Cheating, Mean, Sometimes

  Source: www.elle.com

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• I think, as we go through life, we can sometimes, while still staying essentially true to ourselves, pick up mannerisms or modes of expression that are like curlicues. And there was a lot of that that I recognized sometimes. And I remembered, sometimes dimly, why those phrases felt so tasty to me, why that particular curl felt so good to me. But from my point of view now, it was almost inaccurate. It changed the meaning of what I was saying in a way that it seemed like a distortion.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Thinking, Sometimes, Point Of View

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I focus more on the spiritual or psychic gains.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Spiritual, Focus

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• When my first book came out, it was very disorienting. My health went south. I didn't know how to relate to people. I thought, "Now I have this way to be in the world that's going to be wonderful. It'll be like driving a great car, really streamlined." But it actually was difficult because, if you have a public persona, something you don't fully have control over, it's more like being in a car with controls you don't really understand.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Book, People, Car

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I remember the time I said, 'I don't think you love yourself. You need to learn to love yourself.'

  Mary Gaitskill

  Love You, Thinking, Needs

  Mary Gaitskill (2016). “Veronica”, p.16, Serpent's Tail

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• The hurts of childhood that must be avenged: so small and so huge.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Hurt, Childhood, Huge

  "The other place" by Mary Gaitskill, www.newyorker.com. February 14 & 21, 2011.

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• People tend to set themselves up in patterns; something happens, it hurts them, then something similar happens, and - it's happened again! It seems much bigger then, and they get worried and go through life looking for that thing, and because they're so concerned and looking for it, when anything that happens resembles that thing, they're sure it's happening again. So sometimes people think things are repeating even when they're not.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Hurt, Thinking, People

  Interview with Sheila Heti, believermag.com. February 1, 2009.

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• He had lunch with Cecilia that afternoon. They ate their corned beef on rye and cream cheese with lox in a diner peopled by waiters who looked like they´d met with utter disappointment and become attached to it.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Disappointment, Lunch, Beef

  Mary Gaitskill (1988). “Bad Behavior: Stories”, Poseidon Press

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• When I was a kid, I did want to be a boy. I didn't like to play with dolls, and most of my friends were kind of sensitive, sissy boys. But as I got older, the mystique of being a girl began to interest me. It was confusing what sexuality was, and the responses of other people, but it didn't make me feel terrified or vulnerable.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Girl, Kids, Boys

  Interview with Sheila Heti, believermag.com. February 1, 2009.

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• Dani said this woman, with whom she’d lived for two years, had never known her. “I feel like people accept the first thing I show them,” she said, “and that’s all I ever am to them.

  Mary Gaitskill

  Years, Two, People

  Mary Gaitskill (2009). “Don't Cry: Stories”, p.119, Vintage

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