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" 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. "

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" I think once you write fiction, you put it out, and it can be interpreted in a variety of ways, some of which are going to be shocking to the writer. "

Mary Gaitskill

Variety

Write

You

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

Mary Gaitskill

Kid

Horses

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

" Monogamy is desirable for many reasons, especially in creating a stable, emotionally connected home for children. But judging from centuries of human behavior, it is also a very difficult standard to meet. "

" 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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" One hot summer night in San Francisco, roughly 10 years ago, I was sitting in a crowded Pacific Heights restaurant when Alice Adams walked in with a man. She was about 60 at the time, and she was wearing a skirt that fell an inch or so above her knees and flat heels without stockings. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I think that's the real reason, sometimes, that people talk about my stories as being scary, because if you compare what goes on in my stories to what goes on in popular movies and popular songs, it's very mild. "

" Everyone says 'Anna Karenina' is about individual desire going against society, but I actually think the opposite is stronger: the way societal forces limit the expression of the individual. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" When I was writing 'Bad Behavior,' I was very, very quiet. I would just sit there and listen to people. And if I was out in public, I was usually quiet, and people tended to assume I was stupid because I was a young, pretty girl who's quiet. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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