Because They Wanted To Quotes

“She disapproved, but part of her seemed secretly to sympathize with the sickness. It was like she thought everybody had it, and the best you could do was to cover it up, and sometimes it would just come boiling out anyway. Then you had to point at it and condemn it, even though you knew you had it too.”
― Mary Gaitskill, Because They Wanted To: Stories

“Today the clerk in the fancy deli next door asked me how I was, and I said, 'I have deep longings that will never be satisfied.”
― Mary Gaitskill, Because They Wanted To: Stories

“But he felt disoriented and depressed amid these shifting, lunging, grabbing people from all over the country, who had been in his life for hours and were now about to disappear, taking their personal items and habits with them.”
― Mary Gaitskill, Because They Wanted To

“Of course, not every single person was lonely, but he guessed that she was. She seemed in need of comfort and care, like a stray animal that gets fed by various kindly people but never held.”
― Mary Gaitskill, Because They Wanted To

“This late-adolescent camaraderie gave their time at Meadow a fraught emotional quality that was like the shimmering fullness of a bead of water before it falls. They were all about to scatter and become different from one another, and this made them exult in their closeness and alikeness.”
― Mary Gaitskill, Because They Wanted To