Mary Gaitskill; > Quotes

“I felt like a little piece of flesh chewed by giant teeth. I felt that everyone was being chewed.
To ease my terror, I pictured beautiful cows with liquid eyes eating acres of grass with their great loose jaws. I said to myself, Don’t be afraid. Everything is meant to be chewed, and also to keep making more flesh to be chewed. All prayer is prayer to the giant teeth. Maybe sometimes there is pity for the chewed thing, and that is what we pray to.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“when we met, I talked brightly about nothing and she let herself be drawn into bright nothingness. But I could see dark shapes moving behind her eyes.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“If they wanted to find something wrong, they’d have to look up her ass. They went  up there to serve perfection, and she mocked perfection with the shit that came out.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“I had not gone to New York to be a model, and I hadn’t. I’d gone there for life and sex and cruelty. Not something you learn in community college.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“We crash into one another; everything rattles and shakes like the airplane, only more, and we can’t hear one another even though we’re shouting.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“Her hurt was soft and dark and it had arms to hold me as if I were an infant. I sank into her soft dark arms, into a story of a wicked little girl who stepped on a loaf and fell into a world of demons and deformed creatures.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“Sara would be sitting on a chair at the foot of his bed, rubbing his feet. Even just walking past, I could feel her concentration; it was huge and fleshy, like her yelling.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“I saw other men after Patrick. They were important to me at the time, but now I can’t remember why.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“I don’t have anything to talk about except my new disgusting aches and pains. It’s just depressing.”

“I don’t care if it’s depressing. I want to know what’s going on with you.”

“It may not be too depressing for you, hon. But it’s too depressing for me.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“For the first time, it occurred to me that the unsaid things were not so bad after all. For the first time, it occurred to me that my parents had hidden their hate and pain out of love.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“Because I had to work that night, I drank orange juice straight and wandered through the party, bored by but still accepting the expression that rose on every face as I went past. “Beautiful.” “Beautiful!” “Bee-oot-ee-fool.” The expression might be formed with wonder or contempt or warmth or disinterest, but it was still the same coin I mechanically took and tossed on the pile.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“I turned into a puppet with a giant hand inside me. Not a particular hand. Just a hand.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“Right now, I’m just glad I don’t have to deal with a beautiful girl telling me I have to learn to love myself.”
― Mary Gaitskill;

“I had heard a man who had AIDS interviewed on TV. He said that on top of dying he constantly had to comfort his well friends, who were terrified that he was dying, and that it was exhausting to have to do that.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“But also the whole event was trying to create this experience, this feeling that these guys were great because they were really dealing with something. Compared to you, they weren’t dealing with shit. I don’t mean just because what you’re dealing with is bad, but because it’s real.”

Veronica’s face went from bewildered to hard. “This isn’t a rock song, hon,” she said.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“The queens danced and Veronica danced, and their dancing said, World, kiss my fat middle-aged butt.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“We glimpsed our mother’s boyfriend as he dropped her off—a dark mass of lust and need who kissed her in the car and drove away.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“Gangs of bikers came, huge men with a feeling of piled-up corpses inside them. One of them had a puppy with a dirty rope around its neck. Its eyes were full of misery, and when I petted it, it felt dead inside.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“Imagine ten pictures of me at Carson Models. In nine of them, I’m a real stupid girl, but in the tenth, I’m somebody who could be a model. John was looking at the tenth one, and because he was, I did, too.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica