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" I wanted to talk to a lot of women about their experiences along the path to motherhood - or along the path to not being a mother. "
Sheila Heti
Women
Motherhood
Mother
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" 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
" Some of my favorite experiences of art are when I am there but my attention has wandered. I think stimulation is overrated, and persistent stimulation is exhausting. You sometimes have to be banal, tedious: make the rhythm go soft and slow, give the mind a rest. "
Sheila Heti
Mind
You
Think
" No child, through her own will, can pull a mother out of her suffering, and as an adult, I have been very busy. "
Sheila Heti
Mother
Busy
Own
" 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
" I didn't wander into motherhood or nonmotherhood unconsciously, recklessly. I gave it due consideration. "
Sheila Heti
Consideration
Gave
Motherhood
" The reason I write is because I have questions. What I don't want is for people to forget that I'm a novelist and think I'm a sociologist or something. I don't want to feel trapped into a corner where I don't belong. "
Sheila Heti
People
Feel
Forget
" Women, post-menopause, go back to how they were before they started menstruating, and there's this great freedom in a woman's life when she reaches the end of that reproductive cycle, and that most women come into their own strength, the same strength they had as a girl. "
Sheila Heti
Strength
Life
Freedom
" Women without children can help mothers, and we can just be all in this together. "
Sheila Heti
Children
Mothers
Together
" I really enjoyed the process of 'Women in Clothes,' but there's no way I would have done that again. It felt more like being an editor than a writer, and I longed to write again. "
Sheila Heti
Women
Way
Process
" Writing makes everything else in my life okay; it makes everything make sense. "
Sheila Heti
Okay
Writing
Everything
" I remember where I was when I wrote that story, 'Mermaid in a Jar.' I was at a boyfriend's, and he was the only boy I ever dated who was rich, and his parents had a ski chalet, and I just didn't know how to break up with him, so I decided I would be celibate. "
Sheila Heti
Know
Up
Story
" Laurie Simmons began showing her photographs in New York in the late '70s: black-and-white and then candy-colored scenarios with plastic dolls in 1950s-style domestic interiors. "
Sheila Heti
New York
Black-And-White
Late
" There's something threatening about a woman who is not occupied with children... What sort of trouble will she make? "
Sheila Heti
Children
Will
Who
" I find that when I'm in a relationship, I'm just so 'in it,' you couldn't even call it an art; it's such embroilment. With a friendship, you can choose a little bit more how to behave. You can be guided more. "
Sheila Heti
You
Relationship
Find
" Raffi is arguably the world's most famous children's singer. "
Sheila Heti
Singer
World
Most
" Writing, for me, when I'm writing in the first-person, is like a form of acting. So as I'm writing, the character or self I'm writing about and my whole self - when I began the book - become entwined. It's soon hard to tell them apart. The voice I'm trying to explore directs my own perceptions and thoughts. "
Sheila Heti
Thoughts
Character
Writing
" One good thing about being a woman is we haven't too many examples yet of what a genius looks like. "
Sheila Heti
Good
Being
Genius
" 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
" There's so much anxiety about being understood - and being understood through what you wear. "
Sheila Heti
Wear
Understood
Through
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I feel like every single time I've published a book, there's some little light in me that goes out. I've seen the way people can misunderstand or misinterpret things, if not maliciously, then without a lot of sensitivity. "
Sheila Heti
Me
People
Time
" 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
" My feminism is just part of my being - a part of my understanding of the world. "
Sheila Heti
World
Just
Feminism
" Toronto is my home. It's where my family is. I think I feel an obligation to be within subway distance of the people who raised me. "
Sheila Heti
People
Family
Feel
" 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
" Everyone's always telling themselves stories about their lives, writers or not. "
Sheila Heti
Stories
Telling
Always
" 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