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

The appeal of perfume is that it is at once ephemeral and empowering. It creates a shimmering invisi...
MARY GAITSKILL

What is faithfulness, anyway? Can you be unfaithful to your own feelings and faithful to someone els...
MARY GAITSKILL

Monogamy is desirable for many reasons, especially in creating a stable, emotionally connected home ...
MARY GAITSKILL

Perhaps it should be obvious: Adultery is a social threat that arouses raw anger and fear, which the...
MARY GAITSKILL

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

I used to start at about 10 at night and work until early morning. My preferred way to work is to st...
MARY GAITSKILL

It's scary to me to watch the world around us get less and less physical while in the imaginary ...
MARY GAITSKILL

The two basic social identities were Normal and Greaser; although a few sophisticated girls wore pea...
MARY GAITSKILL

People sometimes turn out to be almost the opposite of how they present. It isn't because they&#...
MARY GAITSKILL

Stories mimic life like certain insects mimic leaves and twigs.
MARY GAITSKILL

My ambition was to live like music.
MARY GAITSKILL

On the rare occasions when my mother perfumed herself, she was going out, and so I rarely smelled th...
MARY GAITSKILL

I think that's the real reason, sometimes, that people talk about my stories as being scary, bec...
MARY GAITSKILL

One hot summer night in San Francisco, roughly 10 years ago, I was sitting in a crowded Pacific Heig...
MARY GAITSKILL

I've noticed women my age and a little younger, anywhere from 35 to 50, saying, 'Who would w...
MARY GAITSKILL

Cooking and baking is both physical and mental therapy.
MARY BERRY

My inner critic who had begun piping up about how hopeless I was and how I didn't know to write.
MARY GARDEN

I decided to write about the myths of divorce.
MARY GARDEN

I deleted all the games from my computer. I spent days trawling the Internet. I started slowly.
MARY GARDEN

If you really want to write, then shut yourself in a room, close the door, and WRITE. If you don'...
MARY GARDEN

Reading Stephen King's book, On Writing, was like being cornered and forced to have a long, draw...
MARY GARDEN

My biggest excuse to others and myself was that I had writer's block, as if it was some kind of ...
MARY GARDEN

In the back of my mind was the constant hankering, almost yearning, to write but something always st...
MARY GARDEN

Krishna children were taught that in the spiritual world there were no parents, only souls and hence...
MARY GARDEN

I was a new devotee of Eastern mysticism and even though I did not join that particular group, I cou...
MARY GARDEN

For a long period in my life - it lasted about 10 years - I had writer's block.
MARY GARDEN

In the early 1930s, flying from England to Australia was the longest flight in the world. It was con...
MARY GARDEN

A wonderful emotion to get things moving when one is stuck is anger. It was anger more than anything...
MARY GARDEN

My block was due to two overlapping factors: laziness and lack of discipline.
MARY GARDEN

It was not uncommon for the children to be told they were being treated this way because it was thei...
MARY GARDEN

Research on child abuse suggests that religious beliefs can foster, encourage, and justify the abuse...
MARY GARDEN

Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated.
MARY SHELLEY

If God had not intended that Women shou'd use their Reason, He wou'd not have given them any...
MARY ASTELL

I long for my garden to be complete. Working in it is one of my joys, but it will never be finished ...
MARY QUANT

Stop the habit of wishful thinking and start the habit of thoughtful wishes.
MARY MARTIN

When people suffer, their relationships usually suffer as well. Period. And we all suffer because, a...
MARY KARR

Nothing you become will disappoint me; I have no preconception that I'd like to see you be or do. I ...
MARY HASKELL

There are no absolutes in this world, and there will always be mistakes that are made within brokera...
MARY SCHAPIRO

When I opened my first shop, city gents were still carrying tightly furled umbrellas and wearing bow...
MARY QUANT

I have a theory of living on the boundary: on the boundary of patriarchy and the boundary of differe...
MARY DALY

Having children is the greatest thing that can happen to you as a husband and wife. They are infuria...
MARY BERRY

I wasn't the brightest button in the class at school, but I enjoyed cooking and baking. I wasn&#...
MARY BERRY

I usually wear only a bit of pink lippy, but for TV, they add a few extra lashes to brighten my eyes...
MARY BERRY

To many women marriage is only this. It is merely a physical change impinging on their ordinary natu...
MARY WEBB

In my end is my beginning.
MARY STUART

You can figure out who you were by which movies you loved when.
MARY SCHMICH

'The Hunger Games' isn't for everybody. But neither is 'Anna Karenina.'
MARY SCHMICH

For some Chicago expats, food is the medicine that blunts the pain of separation.
MARY SCHMICH

TV happens. And once it's happened, it's gone. When it's gone, you move on, no tears, no...
MARY SCHMICH

The first gay person I ever met was surely not the first gay person I ever met.
MARY SCHMICH

The movies we love and admire are to some extent a function of who we are when we see them.
MARY SCHMICH

You can map your life through your favorite movies, and no two people's maps will be the same.
MARY SCHMICH

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with those who are reckless w...
MARY SCHMICH

In twenty years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp n...
MARY SCHMICH

Like many women my age, I am 28 years old.
MARY SCHMICH

Every day each of us wakes up, reaches into drawers and closets, pulls out a costume for the day and...
MARY SCHMICH

On an average day, we allow ourselves the fiction that we own a piece of our workplace. That's p...
MARY SCHMICH

I couldn't have foreseen all the good things that have followed my mother's death. The renew...
MARY SCHMICH

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you'll have a trust fund. Maybe you'll ha...
MARY SCHMICH

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. The older you get, ...
MARY SCHMICH

Opening day. All you have to do is say the words and you feel the shutters thrown wide, the room air...
MARY SCHMICH

Dad thought something very fishy was going on when, at 22, I was offered a job for £1,000 a ye...
MARY BERRY

Campaigning in Wyoming is politics at its most retail level. It's done one voter at a time.
MARY CHENEY

One of our most promising technologies is Super Cruise, which is the working name for an innovative ...
MARY BARRA

I was always nervous before a television show, and I still am now. But 'The Great British Bake O...
MARY BERRY

When you look at the truck market in North America, you have to understand the customer, and that...
MARY BARRA

If you are buying a larger turkey than usual, make sure it will fit in the oven.
MARY BERRY

I mainly cook British food with a few things I've had on my holidays. I went to the Canary Islan...
MARY BERRY

Never tell. Not if you love your wife... In fact, if your old lady walks in on you, deny it. Yeah. J...
MARY BUCKLEY

The test of man is how well he is able to feel about what he thinks. The test of a woman is how we...
MARY MCDOWELL

Liberty, as it is concieved by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift ...
MARY MCCARTY

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift ...
MARY MCCARTHY

Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsci...
MARY KARR

But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhi...
MARY SHELLEY

The best way of forgetting how you think you feel is to concentrate on what you know you know.
MARY STEWART

Mormons... are so strong, they can handle wealth, they are confident. I think it is because they are...
MARY DOUGLAS

When I walk down the boardwalk, people stop me and say, 'Oh, your house is the one that glows.&#...
MARY MATALIN

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if e...
MARY MCCARTHY

There wasn't one particular thing that made us say we needed to have this drill, it's more of a gene...
MARY AUSTIN

When a woman ceases to alter the fashion of her hair, you guess that she has passed the crisis of he...
MARY AUSTIN

Genius . . . arises in the natural, aboriginal concern for the conscious unity of all phenomena.
MARY AUSTIN

We have 60 hills of rhubarb now. When we bought the farm in 1946 we found it coming up in the pastur...
MARY AUSTIN

If you are not at your ideal body weight and are not active, over time, you have a risk of diabetes.
MARY AUSTIN

Our emergency preparedness is always an ongoing priority. We're constantly working on it at the Clin...
MARY AUSTIN

The Stoughton tornado was probably a motivator as well, because that could just as easily have been ...
MARY AUSTIN

What women have to stand on squarely is not their ability to see the world in the way men see it, bu...
MARY AUSTIN

People would be surprised to know how much I learned about prayer from playing poker
MARY AUSTIN

These findings are very reflective of what we see around the world. The rise in weight and obesity i...
MARY AUSTIN

The Internet is a boon for hypochondriacs like me.
MARY ROACH

People who didn't live pre-Internet can't grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was....
MARY KARR

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it again...
MARY OLIVER

My mother always read to me as a child. I really believe that bonding time between a parent and chil...
MARY ENGELBREIT

A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind.
MARY SHELLEY

The mills of God work like lightning compared with the law.
MARY STEWART

Having money is rather like being a blond. It is more fun but not vital.
MARY QUANT

To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, pol...
MARY MCCARTHY

Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wr...
MARY HEMINGWAY

But the things is, you see, that two people can never actually become one no matter how close they a...
MARY BALOGH

...friendship...is essential to intellectuals. You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the ag...
MARY MCCARTHY

Women's courage is rather different from men's. The fact that women have to bring up childre...
MARY WESLEY

The biggest message I have for young women is, Don't start cutting off branches of your career t...
MARY BARRA

World peace starts with the Creator- Jesus!!
MARY KATE

We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story.
MARY MCCARTHY

A person without a memory is either a child or an amnesiac. A country without a memory is neither a ...
MARY ASTOR

A painter paints, a musician plays, a writer writes - but a movie actor waits.
MARY ASTOR

It's not good to make sentimental journeys. You see the differences instead of the sameness.
MARY ASTOR

The man who goes fishing gets something more than the fish he catches.
MARY ASTOR

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with those who are reckless with yours.
MARY SCHMICH

To be kind to all, to like many and love a few, to be needed and wanted by those we love, is certain...
MARY STUART

Two may talk together under the same roof for many years, yet never really meet; and two others at ...
MARY CATHERWOOD

It's like a candy store for an illustrator, I connected with Harry pretty quickly and loved the ...
MARY GRANDPRE

to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is morta...
MARY OLIVER

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles thro...
MARY OLIVER

The Uses Of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved on...
MARY OLIVER

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, w...
MARY OLIVER

Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
MARY OLIVER

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
MARY OLIVER

Every spring
I hear the thrush singing
in the glowing woods
he is only passing throug...
MARY OLIVER

Do one thing everyday that scares you.
MARY SCHMICH

[I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neith...
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

It was the challenge of life too, was it not? People could never be fully understood. They were ever...
MARY BALOGH

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering t...
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, bu...
MARY OLIVER

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
MARY OLIVER

There are few men more superstitious than soldiers. They are, after all, the men who live closest to...
MARY STEWART

The test of man is how well he is able to feel about what he thinks. The test of a woman is how well...
MARY MCDOWELL

Husbands are awkward things to deal with; even keeping them in hot water will not make them tender.
MARY BUCKLEY

If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call f...
MARY PICKFORD

I have never been contained except I made the prison
MARY EVANS

The happy ending is our national belief.
MARY MCCARTHY

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do. The fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.
MARY LITTLE

The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its me...
MARY WEBB

It is harder to kill a whisper than even a shouted calumny.
MARY STEWART

Saddle your dreams before you ride em.
MARY WEBB

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift ...
MARY MCCARTHY

No pressure, no diamonds.
MARY CASE

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.
MARY BYRANT

It seems safe to say that significant discovery, really creative thinking, does not occur with regar...
MARY HENLE

A child is fed with milk and praise.
MARY LAMB

You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call Failure is not the fal...
MARY PICKFORD

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.
MARY MCCARTHY

A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traito...
MARY MCCARTHY

If God is male, then male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to l...
MARY DALY

Why indeed must God be a noun? Why not a verb -- the most active and dynamic of all.
MARY DALY

The divine egoism hat is genius.
MARY WEBB

Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.
MARY HAYS

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.
MARY PICKFORD

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept s...
MARY OLIVER

In violence we forget who we are.
MARY MCCARTHY

We will look upon the earth and her sister planets as being with us, not for us. One does not rape a...
MARY DALY

If all men are born free, why is it that all women are born slaves?
MARY ASTELL

It sounds extraordinary but it?s a fact that balance sheets can make fascinating reading.
MARY ARCHER

Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascinati...
MARY MCCARTHY

Dogs come when they are called; cats take a message and get back to you.
MARY BLY

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.
MARY MCCARTHY

Two may talk together under the same roof for many years, yet never really meet; and two others at f...
MARY CATHERWOOD

Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty --excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beau...
MARY ARNIM

In science, all facts no matter how trivial, enjoy democratic equality.
MARY MCCARTHY

It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised. The mosquito is swatted...
MARY O'CONNOR

No more tears now; I will think upon revenge.
MARY STUART

A woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's demanding equali...
MARY DALY

The best biographies leave their readers with a sense of having all but entered into a second life a...
MARY CABLE

Life can be seen through your eyes but it is not fully appreciated until it is seen through your hea...
MARY XAVIER

Go with your fate, but not beyond. Beyond leads to dark places.
MARY RENAULT

Life can be seen your eyes but it is not fully appreciated until it is seen through your heart.
MARY XAVIER

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it again...
MARY OLIVER

Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.
MARY BATESON

Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you later.
MARY BLY

In violence, we forget who we are
MARY MCCARTHY

Genius . . . arises in the natural, aboriginal concern for the conscious unity of all phenomena.
MARY AUSTIN

Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.
MARY SCHMICH

Reading is a discount to everywhere.
MARY SCHMICH

I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

Good art is art that allows you to enter it from a variety of angles and to emerge with a variety of...
MARY SCHMICH

Cakes are healthy too, you just eat a small slice.
MARY BERRY

It's not good to make sentimental journeys. You see the differences instead of the sameness.
MARY ASTOR

Congress
MARY MCCARTHY

The incipient institution needs some stabilizing principle to stop its premature demise. That stabil...
MARY DOUGLAS

In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very s...
MARY RENAULT

It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death.
MARY RENAULT

Watching my parents I've learnt a lesson many do not recognize. True love is not signaled by romanti...
MARY KATE

The decent, strong person had to do decent, strong things like love unlovable people and keep peace ...
MARY CONNEALY

Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and ro...
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.
MARY HIRSCH

Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child.
MARY MACCRACKEN

I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it.
MARY CHASE

Most of us pass our lives never once laying eyes on our own organs, the most precious and amazing th...
MARY ROACH

My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.
MARY SHELLEY

The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery c...
MARY SHELLEY

Both my parents were agnostic. My mother was kind of a Buddhist. She had some spiritual tendencies, ...
MARY KARR

The elegance of honesty needs no adornment.
MARY BROWNE

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roam...
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.
MARY SHELLEY

For certainly there cannot be a higher pleasure than to think that we love and are beloved by the mo...
MARY ASTELL

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegr...
MARY OLIVER

I want to go to Italy and France; those are my two places. And I really want to go to Greece. I'...
MARY LAMBERT

Without that assured American largesse Israel would have been obliged to come to an accommodation wi...
MARY DOUGLAS

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roug...
MARY OLIVER

The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.
MARY SHELLEY

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

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Mary Gaitskill

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

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