94 Quotes by Mary Gaitskill

Of course there’s something there; unfortunately, there’s always something ‘there.’ Something you will one day be sorry you saw.

But life can give a lot. If you can’t see inside the heart no matter how you look, then why not look? Why not see as much as you can? How is that disrespectful? If you are only given one look, shouldn’t you look as fully as you can?

I have to have dinner with my mother at nine and after that I won’t be fit for human society.

I don’t mean you should despise people for being weak, if it’s a kind of weakness they can’t help. But when they’re weak on purpose, it’s another thing. When they don’t even try. When they let people hurt them and don’t fight back. It’s gross. It’s letting down the whole human race.

My mother looked at my image as if she were looking at a wicked little girl come to scornfully show herself to her poor mother. There was love in her look, but with such jealousy mixed in that the feelings became quickly slurred. It was what my mother gave me, so I took it and I gave it back; I reveled in her jealousy as she reveled in my vanity. Reveling and rageful, we went between sleep and dreams right there in the dining room. Silent and still, we attacked each other like animals.

But underneath, in the place of dream and feeling, she is going places that she, on the surface, would not understand.

Well, chaos was not unfamiliar to him. In daily life, his emotions were chaos. He let himself become a vessel for them, letting feeling roar through him, pulling him around like a kite, boiling him like water in a kettle, dissolving him in a whirl of elements.

Over days and weeks and months, he helped me feel that I was part of humanity, and not with his kindness alone; it was his silliness, his humor, his dirtiness that rekindled my spirit.

Everybody wanted to be depressed. But your depression was supposed to be funny, too, and that was what had proved too much for Dolores.