Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I didn't like horses when I was a kid. "
Mary Gaitskill
Like
Kid
Horses
Related Quotes:
" The appeal of perfume is that it is at once ephemeral and empowering. It creates a shimmering invisible armor that lingers in a room long after its wearer has gone and infuses our imagination with a subtle power, hinting at a hidden identity. "
Mary Gaitskill
Identity
Gone
Imagination
" Stories mimic life like certain insects mimic leaves and twigs. "
Mary Gaitskill
Stories
Leaves
Life
" It's scary to me to watch the world around us get less and less physical while in the imaginary world of pop culture, aggressive impulses and fear reactions are floridly, furiously stoked and indulged. "
Mary Gaitskill
World
Scary
Me
" People sometimes turn out to be almost the opposite of how they present. It isn't because they're trying to fool you or because they're hypocrites. It's because they badly want to be that thing, and so they'll try to be it. "
Mary Gaitskill
Trying
You
Present
" The first person to blow up my fashion consciousness was a 14-year-old girl named Sandrine. She was the most beautiful human I had ever seen. "
Mary Gaitskill
Fashion
Beautiful
She
" Somebody once said to me, 'If you want to be understood, don't write fiction.' "
Mary Gaitskill
Want
Understood
Said
" Having watched television, I would kind of play the role or picture myself on a television show or something like that. That's maybe always been true of a certain type of kid, even before television maybe, but I think it's been amplified to an insane level. "
Mary Gaitskill
Think
Television
Picture
" It's true that your environment influences how you write. "
Mary Gaitskill
Environment
How
Your
" I had really wanted adventure. At the time that I ran away, lots of kids ran away from home. It was something of a social phenomenon. "
Mary Gaitskill
Had
Time
Social
" 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. "
Mary Gaitskill
Dress
Girl
Style
" 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. "
Mary Gaitskill
Think
Upset
Writing
" Where I grew up, in the Detroit area, there was a really good station. Sometimes you would hear songs for the first time on the radio, and if a really special song came on, somebody would turn it up, and everybody would just stop talking. "
Mary Gaitskill
Good
Song
Special
" Anne Frank's diary made a very big impression on me at age 12 or so. "
Mary Gaitskill
Impression
Big
Age
" 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. "
Mary Gaitskill
Mother
Her
Goodbye
" I loved to read and would read anything that roused my interest, whether it was below my age level or above it, even if I could barely make sense of it. "
Mary Gaitskill
Sense
Level
Loved
" Perhaps it should be obvious: Adultery is a social threat that arouses raw anger and fear, which the bellicose then need to discharge rather than merely feel, traditionally on the philandering wife or the female home-wrecker. "
Mary Gaitskill
Feel
Fear
Need
" A sad person who is so involved with his sadness that he mistakes it for reality will have a hard time seeing himself as anything but sad. For him, the sadness is not a feeling that he experiences - it is him. "
Mary Gaitskill
Time
Mistakes
Reality
" At 16, I was in Toronto and very shy and not hanging around with anyone who was intellectual in the slightest, so I didn't really have the means to discuss what I was seeing and feeling. "
Mary Gaitskill
Seeing
Shy
Who
" 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. "
Mary Gaitskill
Courage
Riding
Me
" 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. "
Mary Gaitskill
Off
Down
Turn
" 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. "
Mary Gaitskill
Alone
People
Support
" 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. "
Mary Gaitskill
Talking
Know
Teach
" 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. "
Mary Gaitskill
Right
Me
Sometimes
" I don't know if I can say exactly what I seek in books, but one of them would be to deepen and expand my understanding of the world. "
Mary Gaitskill
I Can
World
Understanding
" I don't think that the Internet creates feelings that aren't there, nor does it provide an outlet. On the contrary, what I have thought about things like computer games - what has disturbed me about them - is that they appear to stimulate feelings of aggression without providing any physical release. "
Mary Gaitskill
Thought
Feelings
Think
" I think it actually started in my late thirties. I started changing psychologically, and it was difficult to translate that into my writing. "
Mary Gaitskill
Think
Writing
Late
" Three writers together would be a nightmare of obstreperous self-consciousness. "
Mary Gaitskill
Would
Three
Nightmare
" Sometimes I write from the point of view of characters whom I would dislike as people, not as a perverse exercise, but because this cracks the story open and makes me see it in a way I would not see it naturally. "
Mary Gaitskill
People
Me
Exercise
" 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. "
Mary Gaitskill
Tall
Everything
People
" I had a strong conviction that there was something out there in the world that was wonderful. "
Mary Gaitskill
World
Strong
Conviction