Mary Gaitskill Quotes

I'd rather let the fiction speak for itself and I don't want to write fiction that tells people how to feel, and I don't want to be judgmental in the fiction.

A novel wouldn't be a book if there weren't some flights of fancy on the part of the author, stopping time to examine things, or to tell a joke.

I'm not going to get into the writer's skills or what he was trying to portray because that's not fair. I can only say what I felt was trying to be portrayed there.

I've tried very hard and I've never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my novels.

I don't have a great eye for detail. I leave blanks in all of my stories. I leave out all detail, which leaves the reader to fill in something better.

I try to write short novels and leave details out not because I want to be minimalist, but because I think that it enables the readers' creativity and interaction with the book.

I love 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' but in some ways I think 'The Lake of Dreams' is a stronger book. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's all you can ever do as a writer. From there on you have no control over it.

I try to avoid describing one interpretation of my books. Of course I have an opinion. I have things I want to say, but I don't ever want to limit anybody, to have them say, 'Oh, he said this, so that's what it's about.' I'm happy people bring their own stuff to it.

Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

Don't ever let the other stuff get in the way of your inherent skills as a kick-butt storyteller. Move the reader, make them happy and sad and excited and scared. Make them stare into space after they've put the book down, thinking about the tale that's become a part of them.

I believe the structure of 'House of Leaves' is far more difficult to explain than it is to read. And while I'd like to lay claim to some extraordinary act of originality, truth is I'm only taking advantage of capabilities inherent in everyone.

I often use nameless places in my work as a way of allowing the readers to create more of the novel and to make it potentially about their experiences, what they know, a city that they have perhaps seen on television.

The writer will write in his or her words, but the readers, even when they are not reading you, will take it elsewhere entirely.

This is what I think is fun about fiction - you get to use as much history as you want as scaffolding and then go beyond it and change it and mutate it.

Sometimes journalists ask me, "What's the message?" There is no message. I think that fiction should not be trying to give messages. Just tell a story.

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer.

My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow.

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I'm 100 percent fiction writer... I don't want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don't state my political messages to anybody.

I suspect there are two kinds of novelists. Those who have a point of view and have something to say and then write a novel in order to say that thing, and those of us who write the book in order to find out what we think about that thing.

I think anything goes in fiction as long as it fits within the interior logic of the work itself and is presented in a disciplined manner.

I'm much more interested in allowing a story to happen, and people find whatever meaning is in there.

A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.

Every now and then I'll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn't have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things.

I love it when people want to interpret my books.