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

- Mary Gaitskill

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.

- Mary Gaitskill

I wasn't ever anybody who had a political thing against marriage, but I just thought, 'Why would I want to do that?'

- Mary Gaitskill

I wanted to communicate and connect. I simply didn't seem able to do it.

- Mary Gaitskill

I think people try to make the most of their time on Earth and also to 'fix' their time on Earth.

- Mary Gaitskill

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

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

- Mary Gaitskill

I remember back in the '90s, I used to feel criticized by women for not having children. Like there must be something wrong with me.

- Mary Gaitskill

I had really wanted adventure. At the time that I ran away, lots of kids ran away from home. It was something of a social phenomenon.

- Mary Gaitskill

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

- Mary Gaitskill

I found the world extraordinarily strange, having first left home at 15.

- Mary Gaitskill

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?

- Mary Gaitskill

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.

- Mary Gaitskill

I didn't want to keep forcing myself to grind out book after book.

- Mary Gaitskill

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

- Mary Gaitskill

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

- Mary Gaitskill

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

- Mary Gaitskill

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.

- Mary Gaitskill

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

- Mary Gaitskill

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