Quotes by Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill

Adultery is like, here’s the way it is, and here’s exactly what you’re supposed to do. It’s like cheating at Monopoly. For me, it just doesn’t apply to human relations. I mean, I use the word sometimes because it’s fair and everybody knows what it means, but I find it a very irritating word.

Cheating

Mean

Sometimes

But now all the natural secrets have been exposed, and it is likely that the turtles have been sold to laboratory scientists who want to remove their shells so that they can wire electrodes to the turtles’ skin in order to monitor their increasing terror at the loss of their shells.

Loss

Order

Turtles

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.

People

Two

Years

Death is a big theme in the book, illness. What is that? It’s a fact that human beings – no matter who they are, no matter how healthy or strong or beautiful they are – are going to age and become weak and ugly by a certain standard, and die. And I think that’s a terrifying idea for people to get their minds around.

Beautiful

Book

Strong

Even happy situations can easily start to feel miserable. So, I think that people who consider themselves sophisticated or who are in fact sophisticated have come to distrust stories that are uplifting or simply stories in which the characters get what they want in the end. Because in life, what you want is never the end.

Character

Thinking

Uplifting

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.

Beef

Disappointment

Lunch

Human beings look so different from each other, voices are so different, everything about us is so individual, and that’s so exciting and juicy and appealing, and we’re attached to these things and they’re so fascinating and beautiful – I don’t just mean model-beautiful, but all the individual forms that people can take.

Beautiful

Mean

Voice

I became very aware of how important it is to connect with children – possibly for the children, if they’re in the mood for that – but certainly for the adults.

Children

Important

Mood

I can be very in my head, but I don’t trust my head all that much. My head is crazy. My head will talk to itself all day and all night if I let it. And my heart is less nutty, but it’s kind of like an overexcited child. I don’t trust my heart all that much either. My body is like a good horse. I trust my body.

Children

Crazy

Horse

I don’t have an opinion about whether or not politics should appear more in fiction or not, generally. I think politics are a part of life, but a part of life that most people don’t think about very much, most of the time. Or, people think about it superficially and they talk about it superficially because they don’t know very much.

Opinion

People

Thinking

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

Adultery

Advice

Age

Ambition

Appreciate

Art

Balls

Beautiful

Beef

Believe

Boiling

Book

Boys

Brain

Car

Cells

Character

Cheating

Childhood

Children

Couple

Crazy

Creative

Culture

Different

Disappointment

Done

Empathy

Energy

Fake

Fall

Fashion

Feelings

Fiction

First Time

Focus

Girl

Giving

Guilt

Hard Work

Horse

Huge

Hurt

Husband

Important

Kids

Kind

Long

Loss

Love You

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

Tool

The Behaviour Diary

Tool

The Dating Diary

Tool

The Relationship Therapist

Tool

Quotes by Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill

But now all the natural secrets have been exposed, and it is likely that the turtles have been sold to laboratory scientists who want to remove their shells so that they can wire electrodes to the turtles’ skin in order to monitor their increasing terror at the loss of their shells.

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.

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.

I became very aware of how important it is to connect with children – possibly for the children, if they’re in the mood for that – but certainly for the adults.

Get Social with TBU

Topics by Mary Gaitskill

Popular Tools

The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

Menu

Menu