Marie Calloway Quotes

#1. I want to say that of course I want my writing to be read and discussed by as many people as possible, but this is different than wanting personal, "celebrity"-like attention. I'm very introverted and sensitive and dislike being talked about, positively or negatively.

Marie Calloway

#2. I'll be the first to admit I wasn't very happy doing what I did [escorting] nor was I very talented at it, so perhaps that's what worked to make it boring for me. However it's hard for me to imagine that a lot of young women who would enjoy and be good at being an escort.

Marie Calloway

#3. Obviously this all gets tricky/complicated when your writing reveals so much of your private/intimate life, and the nature of writing on the Internet comes with a lot of focus on your "personal brand."

Marie Calloway

#4. I admire self-awareness more than probably any other quality, and I think in terms of what qualities are "good" in a person, it's a mostly subjective opinion, so I can't see a reason to think that self-absorption is inherently a bad thing.

Marie Calloway

#5. The pictures feel as essential to me as the text. I was always interested in including pictures with writing.

Marie Calloway

#6. I've never written about a situation involving real people that I haven't directly taken part in. I've never made things up about other people. None of my stories were written with ill-intent towards the other people in them, even though I doubt people will believe that about "Adrien Brody."

Marie Calloway

#7. I think it's sad that we live in a world where men can steal and distribute and publish photos of women without their permission all over the Internet and even in print and make a lot of money doing so, but half naked photos that I took of myself are deemed "obscene."

Marie Calloway

#8. I started to wonder, and felt relieved that there might be truth to the idea of intellectuals all being frauds. I knew that I certainly was.

Marie Calloway

#9. As an adult I've connected a lot with men over the Internet. Nothing seems really notable (pre-"Adrien Brody") except I went to London in July of 2010 and before I went I had a few men lined up to meet, two who made a large impact on me. Both were mentioned in "Adrien Brody."

Marie Calloway

#10. What i'm trying to get at is that to me nothing felt glamorous or exciting or sexually liberating about it. I also think the amount of money you can make escorting is exaggerated (it wasn't uncommon for me to see ads for escorts for 40-60$/hr where I live.)

Marie Calloway

#11. I will be a commodity, and I will be in demand and valuable.

Marie Calloway

#12. There's just something "off" about equating the act of spending three years writing a book with the act of someone exploiting themselves by drunkenly flashing the camera for "Girls Gone Wild" or something.

Marie Calloway

#13. I don't have much to say about honesty. All that I feel about it that people don't discuss as far as I know is how much effort it is to create truly honest writing, in my opinion. It requires a lot of thinking and effort.

Marie Calloway

#14. There's often times a big difference between what you actually thought/felt in a situation and what you think you thought/felt. You have to do a lot of work to make your thoughts/feelings possible to be understood by other people. It's very draining, though also cathartic.

Marie Calloway

#15. I guess I'm also obligated to note that the experience of sex workers who are not upper/middle class/white probably have much worse conditions than anything that's portrayed commonly in media/what I experienced.

Marie Calloway

#16. I feel like people think of me as someone who really believes in a "sex as empowerment" philosophy, like Sasha Grey or something, when actually I feel like I'm much more what a lot of liberal feminists would call "sex negative" than most women I know.

Marie Calloway

#17. I guess that my opinion of writing about real people is informed by defenses of Joyce Maynard's memoir, that the experiences were a part of my life as well, and that I have the right to write about my life.

Marie Calloway

#18. Basically, I feel inspired by any artist that seems to want to introduce the world to their likes and perspective rather than trying to shape their interests and point of view to fit better into the world around them.

Marie Calloway

#19. I'm interested in the female dom/male sub dynamic, and how superficially it can seem like a total reverse of gender roles and maybe even subversive or something.

Marie Calloway

#20. I was a social recluse for most of my life, and so a lot of relationships I've been in have been formed online. I met my first boyfriend online at 15, which culminated in me running away to San Francisco to be with him.

Marie Calloway

#21. I first emailed Tao Lin a story I wrote about the experience of losing my virginity sometime in April 2011. He didn't respond until it was later published on Thought Catalog, after which he sent me an email that said something very similar to, "I enjoyed reading this on Thought Catalog. Good job."

Marie Calloway

#22. I think in general in my teens I had a lot of crushes on men on the Internet, most notably Momus since I was in my late teens. John Darnielle was also another big crush.

Marie Calloway

#23. Besides the money aspect, I guess I was curious about sex work. In the way that most people are, but also because ever since I was a teen I had read feminist writers like Dworkin and Mackinnon and the way they wrote about sex work had an enormous impact on me. Was it really as horrible as they said?

Marie Calloway