Quote

I think people hold back all kinds of things. And in a way, they just want to be nice. They want to be civil.

Mary Gaitskill

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mary Gaitskill
Age: 69
Born: 1954
Born: November 11
Author
Novelist
Writer
Lexington
Kentucky
Thinking
Civil
People
Kinds
Hold
Nice
Back
Kind
Things
Think

More quotes by Mary Gaitskill

Image
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
Image
My ambition was to live like music.
Mary Gaitskill
Image
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
Image
Whenever young writers ask me for advice, I always say you have to be able to take a lot of rejection because, unless you're very lucky, that's what's going to happen.
Mary Gaitskill
Image
But now all the natural secrets have been exposed, and it is likely that the turtles have been sold to laboratory scientists who want to remove their shells so that they can wire electrodes to the turtles' skin in order to monitor their increasing terror at the loss of their shells.
Mary Gaitskill
Image
When you approach the second half of your life, you start to unconsciously consider what you're passing on. As a writer, that's obviously part of what you're doing. And as a teacher, that's another way of passing on information, history, or whatever you have.
Mary Gaitskill
Image
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
Image
I focus more on the spiritual or psychic gains.
Mary Gaitskill
Image
I can be very in my head, but I don't trust my head all that much. My head is crazy. My head will talk to itself all day and all night if I let it. And my heart is less nutty, but it's kind of like an overexcited child. I don't trust my heart all that much either. My body is like a good horse. I trust my body.
Mary Gaitskill
Image
I think women who are very creative and giving members of society can be respected and accepted.
Mary Gaitskill
Image
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
Image
The hurts of childhood that must be avenged: so small and so huge.
Mary Gaitskill
Image
I know several women my age who are really poor...because they spent most of their energy taking care of children.
Mary Gaitskill
Image
The art of integrating the ego and the impulse for empathy in a dynamic call and response.
Mary Gaitskill
Image
You can teach people a lot about craft and various techniques, and you can certainly teach them to appreciate, but you cannot give them spirit or soul if it's not there.
Mary Gaitskill
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Human beings look so different from each other, voices are so different, everything about us is so individual, and that's so exciting and juicy and appealing, and we're attached to these things and they're so fascinating and beautiful - I don't just mean model-beautiful, but all the individual forms that people can take.
Mary Gaitskill
Image
She disapproved, but part of her seemed secretly to sympathize with the sickness. It was like she thought everybody had it, and the best you could do was to cover it up, and sometimes it would just come boiling out anyway. Then you had to point at it and condemn it, even though you knew you had it too.
Mary Gaitskill
Image
I think if a woman is very happy with herself and at ease with her choices, it goes a long way toward making other people feel at ease with her.
Mary Gaitskill