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" Not being locked into one set of feelings, which you run the risk of mistaking for the truth, you have greater and more intense access to all feeling states, including those you would never choose to act out. "

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" I used to start at about 10 at night and work until early morning. My preferred way to work is to start in the early afternoon and work until about 3, go do errands, have dinner, and then write for a few more hours in the evening. "

Mary Gaitskill

Morning

Work

Way

" 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 had a strong conviction that there was something out there in the world that was wonderful. "

" 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. "

" Married, you're basically part of the herd, and that makes life easier in a lot of ways in terms of social support. But if you're not by nature a herd animal, you start to feel like you're passing. "

" 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. "

" I've noticed women my age and a little younger, anywhere from 35 to 50, saying, 'Who would want to bring kids into a world like this?' Or, 'I don't want to spend my life that way. I want to do my artwork.' And they're very unapologetically stating this. "

" The two basic social identities were Normal and Greaser; although a few sophisticated girls wore peace signs, hippies didn't exist, and while a seminal punk band, Iggy and the Stooges, was playing in nearby Ann Arbor, punk didn't exist yet, either. "

" 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. "

Mary Gaitskill

Right

Sometimes

" My first and strongest memories about perfume come from childhood, from my mother, and they are a complex blend of her private and public selves. "

" I wasn't ever anybody who had a political thing against marriage, but I just thought, 'Why would I want to do that?' "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Stories are the rich, unseen underlayer of the most ordinary moments. "

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

" 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. "

" What is faithfulness, anyway? Can you be unfaithful to your own feelings and faithful to someone else? Is it faithful to lie in bed night after night with someone you love but no longer desire while ardently dreaming of someone else? "

" I didn't start thinking about what I wanted to do professionally until I was 17. I was a hippie, but I did write. "

" I didn't like horses when I was a kid. "

Mary Gaitskill

Kid

Horses

" 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. "

" The hard truth is that there are people who believe they're writers and work hard at it and are sincere about it, but they don't make it. You have to be prepared for that possibility. "

" I think people try to make the most of their time on Earth and also to 'fix' their time on Earth. "

" 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

Exercise

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

" 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. "

" When looking out the window and watching the water becomes a drama, then literally everything is a drama. "

" 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. "

" I found the world extraordinarily strange, having first left home at 15. "