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Top 25 Mary Gaitskill Quotes (2025 Update)

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “I remember the time I said, ‘I don’t think you love yourself. You need to learn to love yourself.’”

1. “I remember the time I said, ‘I don’t think you love yourself. You need to learn to love yourself.’”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “My ambition was to live like music.”

2. “My ambition was to live like music.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “The hurts of childhood that must be avenged: so small and so huge.”

3. “The hurts of childhood that must be avenged: so small and so huge.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “The art of integrating the ego and the impulse for empathy in a dynamic call and response.”

4. “The art of integrating the ego and the impulse for empathy in a dynamic call and response.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “I wanted to know people. I wanted to love. But I didn’t realize how badly I had been hurt. I didn’t realize that my habit of distance had become so unconscious and deep that I didn’t know how to be with another person. I could only fix that person in my imagination and turn him this way and that, trying to feel him, until my mind was tired and raw.”

5. “I wanted to know people. I wanted to love. But I didn’t realize how badly I had been hurt. I didn’t realize that my habit of distance had become so unconscious and deep that I didn’t know how to be with another person. I could only fix that person in my imagination and turn him this way and that, trying to feel him, until my mind was tired and raw.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “You can teach people a lot about craft and various techniques, and you can certainly teach them to appreciate, but you cannot give them spirit or soul if it’s not there.”

6. “You can teach people a lot about craft and various techniques, and you can certainly teach them to appreciate, but you cannot give them spirit or soul if it’s not there.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “Of course there’s something there; unfortunately, there’s always something ‘there.’ Something you will one day be sorry you saw.”

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

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “Today the clerk in the fancy deli next door asked me how I was, and I said, ‘I have deep longings that will never be satisfied.”

8. “Today the clerk in the fancy deli next door asked me how I was, and I said, ‘I have deep longings that will never be satisfied.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “I have to have dinner with my mother at nine and after that I won’t be fit for human society.”

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

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “In my diary I wrote, “I fear my father’s anger, but I fear my mother’s love.”

10. “In my diary I wrote, “I fear my father’s anger, but I fear my mother’s love.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “But this flower comes in the form of a human; it must soon succumb to disease, atrophy, ruined skin, broken teeth, the unbearable frailty of mortality.”

11. “But this flower comes in the form of a human; it must soon succumb to disease, atrophy, ruined skin, broken teeth, the unbearable frailty of mortality.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “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.”

12. “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.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “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.”

13. “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.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “She couldn’t feel anything inside herself now but flat metallic strength.”

14. “She couldn’t feel anything inside herself now but flat metallic strength.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “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.”

15. “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.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “The only way to know whats possible is to venture past impossible.”

16. “The only way to know whats possible is to venture past impossible.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “Everybody wanted to be depressed. But your depression was supposed to be funny, too, and that was what had proved too much for Dolores.”

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

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “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.”

18. “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

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “But underneath, in the place of dream and feeling, she is going places that she, on the surface, would not understand.”

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

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “But prettiness is always about pleasing people. When you stop being pretty, you don’t have to do that anymore. I don’t have to do that anymore. It’s my show now.”

20. “But prettiness is always about pleasing people. When you stop being pretty, you don’t have to do that anymore. I don’t have to do that anymore. It’s my show now.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “I shared a dorm room with a beautiful neurotic who clung to her beauty as if it were a chance piece of debris keeping her afloat on a violent sea.”

21. “I shared a dorm room with a beautiful neurotic who clung to her beauty as if it were a chance piece of debris keeping her afloat on a violent sea.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “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?”

22. “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?”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “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.”

23. “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.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “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.”

24. “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.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.”

25. “If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “Her mouth smiled, smiled hard, but her eyes did not smile, ever. Her eyes watched and looked for something they knew they’d never find.”

26. “Her mouth smiled, smiled hard, but her eyes did not smile, ever. Her eyes watched and looked for something they knew they’d never find.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “I stared at the objects before me: cold coffee in a cup of thick white glass, folded napkin, spoon with a liquid coffee shadow on its face. Symbols of order and humility, comfort and banality. These were the things of my life; I had been sitting at these goddamn coffee tables all my life recovering from what other people had done to me.”

27. “I stared at the objects before me: cold coffee in a cup of thick white glass, folded napkin, spoon with a liquid coffee shadow on its face. Symbols of order and humility, comfort and banality. These were the things of my life; I had been sitting at these goddamn coffee tables all my life recovering from what other people had done to me.”

— Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill Quote: “He looks like somebody wandering in a dark maze, clutching his little bit of goodness, knowing it’s all he’s got but not remembering what it is or how to use it.”

28. “He looks like somebody wandering in a dark maze, clutching his little bit of goodness, knowing it’s all he’s got but not remembering what it is or how to use it.”

— Mary Gaitskill

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