Mary Gaitskill Quotes

I look thuggish when I shave my head and wear big boots. I walk into a newsagent and people think I'm going to jump the counter.

I think I'm not always what I seem. Most people, when they get to know me, say, 'You know, when I first met you...' People initially think I'm a snob because I'm intensely private.

When you're being looked at very hard, it's very hard to look back. And that made me stop paying attention to the world in a way that allowed me then to write about it.

When people meet me, many times they're very surprised because they expect someone who is kind of wacky with seven piercings and very hip and cool and New York City, and I'm not.

Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation.

Whether you want to admit it or not, people begin to judge you the minute you walk in the door.

I must begin by saying something about the old Germany. That Germany, too, suffered from superficial judgment, because appearances and reality were not always kept apart in people's minds.

I was always such a people-watcher. I would sit on street corners alone and watch people and make up stories about them in my head. Then, all of a sudden, I was the one being watched.

I've always been melancholic. At a party, everyone would be looking at the glittering chandeliers and I'd be looking at the waitress's cracked shoes.

I think that when people look at me, and they look at my height and my voice and my coloring, they automatically think, 'Tough.'

I just never really understood the reason I understood movies so well, and I didn't realize that me being such a people-watcher was even a gift at all.

It's always nice when people discover I'm a normal person and not, because of my appearance, a half-crazed lunatic who may stab them with a Bic pen.

A man who correctly guesses a woman's age may be smart, but he's not very bright.

You can tell a lot about a woman by her email signature. Actually you can't but for some reason people do anyway.

I think people always misjudge me.

When I meet a woman, I know how her brow will look.

A lot of people don't believe I was a soldier. They look at my luscious hair and wacky bow-tie collection and immediately put me down as some kind of supernatural geek.

Maybe you don't know who a person is just based on the way they dress. I know that's a really simple thing you're supposed to be taught really young, but sometimes you can forget.

I know I can play, but people who haven't seen me and look at me on a football pitch think, 'He's tall, and he's there to head the ball.'

I hope people realise that there is a brain underneath the hair and a heart underneath the boobs.

The better you look, the more you see.

You know, there's a thing about the woman across the room. You see the woman across the room, you think, She's so poised; she's so together. But she looks at you and you are the woman across the room for her.

Don't assume I'm dumb because I wear a suit and tie.

Let's face it, most pretty girls aren't funny.

I write to find out what I'm talking about.