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" 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. "

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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. "

Mary Gaitskill

Identity

Gone

Imagination

" 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. "

" If anything is scary about my writing, it's that it's the product of a very particular vision and doesn't reference common speech that heavily. By 'common speech,' I don't mean language as much as an agreed-on way of seeing, or a shorthand. "

" 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 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. "

" Stories mimic life like certain insects mimic leaves and twigs. "

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

" I feel I'm often misunderstood by critics. People project a lot or exaggerate the subjective fragility simply because it's frightening to them. "

" Three writers together would be a nightmare of obstreperous self-consciousness. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

" 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. "

" 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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "