Mary Gaitskill Quotes About Writing
-
When you're writing a story, you're creating something of an artificial ending.
→ -
The art of integrating the ego and the impulse for empathy in a dynamic call and response.
→ -
Somebody once said to me if you want to be understood, don't write fiction.
→ -
Writing is.... being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.
→ -
I think the closest thing I can come to defining what that vital thing is for me - is that there's a sort of soul-quality in writing, if it's any good. It has a spirit or an energy to it that is very integral to who the writer is on a deep level. It's almost a cellular thing. It takes place in the cells of the writing, and it is what makes it alive or not.
→
Related Authors
-
Zadie Smith Novelist -
Amy Hempel Writer -
Jennifer Egan Novelist -
Eileen Myles Poet -
Lydia Davis Writer -
Ralph Gibson Photographer -
Dale Peck Novelist -
Jim Shepard Author -
A.M. Homes Writer -
Lorrie Moore Writer -
Flannery O'Connor Writer -
Lou Reed Musician -
Vladimir Nabokov Novelist -
Jonathan Lethem Novelist -
Steven Shainberg Film director -
Erin Cressida Wilson Playwright -
Maggie Gyllenhaal Actress -
Sam Lipsyte Novelist -
Rick Moody Novelist -
Ben Marcus Author