Music is a form that tends to give shape to rules, social mores, social attitudes, feelings–it does this in a very beautiful, fluid way. To me the issue of form and formlessness is most strong in the theme of mortality versus a human wish for immortality of a sort. Take, for example, the definition of beauty in fashion. Remember what Alison says at the beginning? She says when she was young she didn’t know what beautiful was. She looked at this woman who everyone was saying was beautiful and she didn’t even know what they were talking about. I experienced that when I was a child. If I loved someone I thought they were really beautiful. And then eventually, I began to get it, the social concept of beauty. Not that I think beautiful is completely imaginary, but beauty is so wide ranging and fluid. Yet there’s a need to say: “This is what it is, and it’s not changing; we’re taking a picture of it to hold it still.” It’s like an impulse to put up a building meant to last forever. An urge to grab and hold something in place when nothing human can be grabbed and held in place. We come into these physical bodies. whatever we are takes this shape that is so particular and distinct–eyes, nose, mouth–and then it gradually begins to disintegrate. Eventually it’s going to dissolve completely. It’s a huge problem for people; we can understand it, but it breaks our hearts. And so we’re constantly trying to pin something down or leave a trace that will last forever. “And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. ” What other immortality will anyone share?. Mary Gaitskill
Some Similar Quotes
  1. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. - William Shakespeare

  2. And, in the end The love you takeis equal to the love you make. - Paul Mccartney

  3. Life, he realize, was much like a song. In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile. - Nicholas Sparks

  4. You're like a song that I heard when I was a little kid but forgot I knew until I heard it again. - Maggie Stiefvater

  5. Live your truth. Express your love. Share your enthusiasm. Take action towards your dreams. Walk your talk. Dance and sing to your music. Embrace your blessings. Make today worth remembering. - Steve Maraboli

More Quotes By Mary Gaitskill
  1. 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...

  2. My ambition was to live like music.

  3. It's nothing serious, " he said. "It's just an obsession.

  4. Dani said this woman, with whom she’d lived for two years, had never known her. “I feel like people accept the first thing I show them, ” she said, “and that’s all I ever am to them.

  5. 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.

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