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" I just always try to respond to what I'm most interested in at the moment - that hasn't changed. "
Sheila Heti
Moment
Try
Respond
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" When I was younger, I think that I felt like I could only live one way, and I had to figure out which of those one ways it was going to be. I have no anxiety about making the wrong decision. "
Sheila Heti
Think
Decision
Way
" Only in our failures are we absolutely alone. Only in the pursuit of failure can a person really be free. Losers may be the avant garde of the modern age. "
Sheila Heti
Only
Failure
Free
" Sometimes you can't write a novel for weeks and weeks, but it's good for your self-esteem to work on something else. "
Sheila Heti
Self-Esteem
You
Work
" Every choice you make has higher stakes - or that's how it feels. "
Sheila Heti
Feels
Choice
How
" It's so weird how our existence hinges on just absolute crazy chance, but it feels so essential. It's like, 'Nothing would be here if you weren't here,' because you are the centre of your universe. "
Sheila Heti
Weird
Chance
Crazy
" You think you're writing the most important book, you think you're writing the most stupid book, and you never really know before it's done that it's going to be done. "
Sheila Heti
Stupid
You
Think
" I don't think about the reader when I'm writing, but I do when I'm editing, of course. For instance, I self-consciously didn't want to do anything to increase the divide between mothers and nonmothers - I think that divide is so horrible and destructive and unnecessary. "
Sheila Heti
Editing
Writing
Want
" In my experience, women who are taken seriously take themselves seriously. It's not what you wear. "
Sheila Heti
Seriously
You
Women
" Everyone has to put clothes on in the morning, and it's interesting to see how much people's personal histories come into that decision. "
Sheila Heti
People
Decision
See
" Many of the traits in my characters are exaggerations of things I see in myself. But in 'How Should a Person Be?' I wasn't trying to write about myself so much as a combination of myself and these women I was seeing in our culture. "
Sheila Heti
Culture
Myself
Seeing
" I'd rather that people could be both entertained and given rest while reading my book than for someone to have to put the book down to take a rest. You can't just be lighting firecrackers all the time. "
Sheila Heti
You
Book
People
" To me, something that's beautiful in terms of a book is something that lives inside the reader both as a discrete and complete thing, but also something that seeps out into their life and thoughts. "
Sheila Heti
Beautiful
Book
Life
" There is a kind of sadness in not wanting the things that give so many other people their life's meaning. There can be sadness at not living out a more universal story - the supposed life cycle. "
Sheila Heti
Story
Life
People
" Nonfiction, to me, feels like an argument, whereas a novel is like a series of questions. "
Sheila Heti
Like
Feels
Argument
" When you're writing, I think a big part of writing comes out of an attempt to understand yourself. You're dealing with emotions and thoughts that are native to you. So that probably winds up in your characters. "
Sheila Heti
You
Think
Thoughts
" If you want to write from life, you can't really write a story. People are always changing, and I think if we didn't look the same day-to-day, and our self weren't always in our body, would we even be the same? The continuity is in our bodies. "
Sheila Heti
Self
People
Life
" Our delusions of omniscience play a role in our ideas of not only what we want but also what we want to escape. "
Sheila Heti
Role
Only
Ideas
" Fiction is a way for writers to preserve their friendships and their romances! "
Sheila Heti
Fiction
Friendships
Preserve
" We're so sure of what our unlived lives would have been like that we feel guilty for not living them - for not living up to our potential. "
Sheila Heti
Guilty
Potential
Living
" Women without children can help mothers, and we can just be all in this together. "
Sheila Heti
Children
Mothers
Together
" Everyone is their own kind of poet - you can't miss it when their words are written down. "
Sheila Heti
You
Words
Own
" Renown is something people have always wanted, but maybe what's modern is that it's considered a virtue, this desire, rather than a vice. I might be wrong about this. "
Sheila Heti
Desire
People
Wrong
" Today, I defined 'sentimental' to myself as a feeling about the idea of a feeling. "
Sheila Heti
Today
Sentimental
Feeling
" A daughter is more difficult than a rose. "
Sheila Heti
Than
Difficult
More
" I remember very vividly a little plaid dress on which my father sewed all these hanging beads, little horses and stuff. It was my favourite thing ever. I had it when I was four, and I kept it until I was 12, when I gave it to the little neighbour girl. For years, I regretted giving it to her, even though I had no use for it. "
Sheila Heti
Girl
Giving
Remember
" It took me five or six years to write 'How Should a Person Be?' and there were many times when I felt discouraged. "
Sheila Heti
Years
Discouraged
Me
" For me, a memoir is supposed to be understood as a representation of your life, whereas a novel is self-consciously symbolic. "
Sheila Heti
Your
Representation
Me
" I think that part of the reason I like collaboration so much is because it's something unexpected coming in, and you have to stretch yourself to absorb it. "
Sheila Heti
Yourself
Collaboration
Think
" I just always felt whole when I was writing. I felt this kind of beautiful privacy that I never felt in any other way. I feel like there's this great fullness to being alone, and writing is a really vivid way and a really magical way of being alone. "
Sheila Heti
Great
Being Alone
Beautiful
" Most fiction writers are driven to find their own 'voice,' but I am more interested in the voices of others. "
Sheila Heti
Own
Driven
Find