Mary Gaitskill Quotes

When I was in my 30s, I was at the end of a long-term relationship and going through a very hard time. I'd had about 15 different addresses and a series of relationships. I thought, 'It's time to have a look at yourself.'

I say I have a midlife crisis every time I start and finish a record.

When I turned 40, subconsciously, life was a blank sheet. Before, it was disjointed, and I was very displaced and quite mad, but it was a brilliant time. Everyone thinks I must have been unhappy.

Around mid-life everyone goes maniac a little bit.

Some people go off to an ashram or they, you know, have a midlife crisis and buy a sports car. For me, I do 'Hedwig,' and I see it's a midlife crisis maybe, and I see what's next. And it's a good trampoline, maybe, into the next part of my life.

I like to dissociate myself from the person I was even three hours ago. It's a natural requirement to be a writer.

Middle Age At forty-five, What next, what next? At every corner, I meet my Father, My age, still alive.

Most things I go through I have to write about.

My joy as a writer is circling around and around and down and down to find out who the real person is.

Sometimes I do feel like I write the same story again and again. And for me, I am always looking for a place with a kind of redemption.

You hear about these guys having midlife crises - I don't see that happening to me.

When I'm writing well, I feel happy. And when I go too long without writing, I begin to implode.

It took me years of attempts and failed drafts before I finally wrote the elegies I needed to write.

At midlife, I think a woman has more in common with her teenage children than anybody else. We all are kind of uncertain. We realize for the first time in either our lives or decades that we're in charge now.

Certainly, I devote my energy to both telling my personal life story and seeking self- obliteration. However, I will not destroy myself through art.

All of us every single year, we're a different person. I don't think we're the same person all our lives.

If I was going to write something, I'd need to stop for three months and just see if I had any thoughts in there.

A lot of middle-aged women are children still trying to find their way.

I always did think that when I turned 40, I'd start coming into my own.

I think I had a kind of pause for insight in my 20s when I wasn't in a relationship and my career wasn't going the way I wanted it to go. I had time for reflection then.

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

Your children are grown and your career has slowed down - all the stuff that took up so much attention is gone, and you're left with expansive time and space. You have to reimagine who you are and what life is about.

People naturally change a lot during their 20s, so my songs reflect that progression.

I may attempt a novel. I think that no matter what you write, it requires being honest with oneself, and you have to pull yourself out of the whirlwind of daily life.

The two records are very different. I guess, on the second record, that's more where I was at. Its not that I'm more well-adjusted or anything, it's just that what I wanted to sing about maybe was more the way I wanted to feel.