Mary Gaitskill Quotes

When I was young as a teenager, that was the biggest mystery in the world to me: Why don't people connect?

We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words.

The more specific you are about a very general feeling of loneliness is actually how you connect with people.

I take time to be with people, and I learn a lot.

The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others.

You know you lose a lot of social skills if you're a writer. You spend too long alone. And its forced me to address that.

I have to get out once a week and speak with people or I start thinking I'm the emperor of Abyssinia.

If you're living completely on your own, break out of solitary confinement. Seek to understand others, and help them understand you.

I love how a story can help someone discuss something they otherwise would not.

Being understood is not the most essential thing in life.

There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.

I think people are isolated because of the nature of human consciousness, and they like it when they feel the connection between themselves and someone else.

I think, for a long time, I didn't have people who understood where I was coming from. They were giving me advice on what would be good for them.

Not listening to people who care about you, not to be open or transparent, will make you isolated.

I feel that we Germans are spending less and less time talking to each other. And even less time listening to each other.

It takes loneliness in oneself to recognize it in another.

Can you see me? Can you hear me? Does anything I say mean anything to you?

I really do wish people could understand me some day.

I'm starting to realize that people lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, & so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.

Nobody listens anymore. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me, I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read.

I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me, and I learned to hate.

I'm concerned with the lost, the lonely, the shy. I think shyness is in some ways more widespread now than formerly. I used to be shy myself. Of course, you can't be me now and remain shy, but I remember very well what it felt like.

I'm always on the phone because I'm usually not with the people I want to be with.

The one thing I think you must do is, as painful as it is as a parent, is listen.

With technology, there is so much isolation with people now, that there are very few places where you can connect.