A Quote by Mary Gaitskill

It's bizarre: I've tried to understand why people are into Trump. I really don't think I can. I don't think it's as simple as just racism. I do think there's a fear that white people have, even if they don't have a vicious desire to do harm to black people, they fear losing their top spot.
I think people, unfortunately, do live in constant fear. I think the government - and people in general - create scenarios people fear, because ultimately through fear you can control people. I wish we could live in a world where there would be no fear, but it's a driving force in many decisions people make these days, whether it's personal, economic, or even job-related. A lot of people stay out of fear in a job they hate.
The degree to which I try to be honest that there's some Donald Trump in all of us. The seduction of the promise of order, the politics of white fear, it's not just some other group of uneducated white people who are susceptible to those appeals. It's everyone. And not just white people, frankly. All Americans have this susceptibility to a politics of fear and order that I think we have to be really honest about.
White people's fear of Black people with guns will never cease to amaze me. Probably it's because they think about what they would do were they in our place. Especially the police, who have done so much dirt to Black people - their guilty conscience tells them to be afraid. When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear.
A lot of racism going on in the world right now. Who's more racist? Black people or white people? Black people. You know why? 'Cuz we hate black people too! Everything white people don't like about black people, black people really don't like about black people.
The power of fear of failure, with will to win, is an incredible force. I don't think we should be worried about having a fear of failure; I think it's quite natural. If you surveyed any top businessman or any top athlete, I bet if they were truthful, they would all say they've got a fear of losing and a fear of failure.
We fear the past, present and future. We fear the unknown, we fear not having enough, losing what we have, not having what we want. We fear what will become of us and those that we care for. We fear what others think of us and what they don't think of us. We fear, fear, fear and therefore we are controllable through the manipulation of all that we fear. The present War on Terror is the War of Fear. No Fear, no control.
You can't believe how hard it is for people to be simple, how much they fear being simple. They worry that if they're simple, people will think they're simpleminded. In reality, of course, it's just the reverse. Clear, tough-minded people are the most simple.
The difference between people who succeed and people who fail, I think in many cases it’s not fear. Everyone experiences fear. The difference is what do you do with your fear. Do you work to overcome it or do you let it defeat you? And I think that is actually what distinguishes very successful people from others.
The media has contempt for people that voted for Trump. They have no desire to understand who they are. They already think they know. They have no desire to drill down and find out why people would reject the woman they loved, Hillary Clinton.
Successful people have a bigger fear of failure than people who've never done anything because if you haven't been successful, then you don't know how it feels to lose it all. You don't have that fear. So why do you think people get stuck in those boxes? It's that fear of going back down.
I understand that people are afraid. Because I think censorship is about fear. It's just fear being projected onto art.
The relative lack of power of certain minority groups and the fear they're feeling in the wake of Donald Trump's election, I think, is something we really need to take a look at, because, while I don't think Trump wants to target any particular minority group, I understand their fear, because he spent many months stoking it.
I've done and said a lot of things when I was younger that I don't know if I even understood what I was doing or why I was doing it. There's a lot of compassion in understanding what people go through and even in trying to understand why a person would act the way they do. I was a very reactive person, and I did things that were just really bizarre; I don't think people understood it at all.
The first eight years of schooling was with all white people. So that helped me to understand how white people think. I think that transition is what helped me bridge the gap, because that's what my success has really been about: bridging the gap between the black community and the white community.
I have tried to emphasize to people that, hey, just like President Obama was a really good president, and the fact that he was black I think was historic and unprecedented, but he also claimed and owned his excellence, and that's why I'm saying, okay - I think it's really exciting and historic that I would be the first woman president, but I have a lot of work I want to do. And I hope that people will say, "Hey, she's getting it done." That's how I think about it.
There are people who think that Trump's base was created by Steve Bannon - they are Alt-Right white nationalists and so forth - and that if Bannon ever turned on Trump, that everybody that voted for Trump would abandon Trump if Bannon leaves. I think that's just so much BS, I can't tell you, and so does people who voted for Trump.
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