Mary Gaitskill Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

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

Mary Gaitskill
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
He had lunch with Cecilia that afternoon. They ate their corned beef on rye and cream cheese with lox in a diner peopled by waiters who looked like they'd met with utter disappointment and become attached to it.

Mary Gaitskill
When he held her that way, she felt so happy that it disturbed her. After he left, it would take her hours to fall asleep, and then when she woke up she would feel another onrush of agitated happiness, which was a lot like panic. She wished she could grab the happiness and mash it into a ball and hoard it and gloat over it, but she couldn't. It just ran around all over the place, disrupting everything.

Mary Gaitskill
She brightened. "Last week I ran a personal ad in the Guardian. I answered a few too. I'm not looking for sex; I feel too vulnerable for that. I just want somebody to hurt me and humiliate me."

Mary Gaitskill
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
It was like everything that supported the relationship was coming from the outside. Judging by all the signs, we were a perfectly successful couple and John was an ideal husband for me - rich, blond, tall, sensitive, ad nauseam. But even worse, it seemed as if our most intimate conversations were based on what we were supposed to be saying, and what we were supposed to be. Nothing seemed to come directly from us.

Mary Gaitskill
I remember the time I said, 'I don't think you love yourself. You need to learn to love yourself.'

Mary Gaitskill