The mistake men make as writers is to forget the inner life, to project it all on to choices symbolized by lovers, places, jobs. The mistake women make is to project the inner life into dialogue, so that people say exquisitely articulate things off the cuff.

Lorrie Moore does it all the time. All the characters in a Lorrie Moore story are as witty and articulate as Lorrie Moore. Gaitskill does it only occasionally, like this passage in Veronica when Alison says to her sister: "But sometimes I get this picture of what it's like inside her. I picture inside her being a maze that's really small and dark, full of roadblocks and trick doors. I picture her twisting around and around, waiting to go forward and not being able to find the way. Like a bee that's banging on the screen door--you open the door and you wait for it to go out, but it just keeps banging on the screen."

That's the writer talking, not the character.