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" 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
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" 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. "
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" There's something threatening about a woman who is not occupied with children... What sort of trouble will she make? "
Sheila Heti
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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
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" 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
" 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
" To add something to the world should be the question, not not adding something to the world. "
Sheila Heti
Should
World
Add
" My feminism is just part of my being - a part of my understanding of the world. "
Sheila Heti
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Just
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" I see friends of mine who have kids and continue to do their art. It's deeply impressive. I can't even fit an Amazon return into the day. It's been sitting on my desk for two weeks. "
Sheila Heti
See
Friends
Sitting
" I think that so many people who have children seem to want other people to have children in order to make their choice feel more essential, more inevitable, and just more right. "
Sheila Heti
Choice
Feel
Children
" I believe there's a platonic ideal for every book that is written, like there's the perfect version of the book somewhere in the ether, and my job is to find what that book is through my editing. "
Sheila Heti
Perfect
Job
Believe
" 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
" Raffi doesn't have any grand theories about why his music has been so successful, but he credits a group called the Babysitters as early inspiration. "
Sheila Heti
Successful
He
Group
" I didn't wander into motherhood or nonmotherhood unconsciously, recklessly. I gave it due consideration. "
Sheila Heti
Consideration
Gave
Motherhood
" 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
" I don't wear shoes that are going to give me any pain. I just cannot do that. "
Sheila Heti
Me
Going
Pain
" Trying to live the image of the life which you have in your head... it's really hard not to do that, but I do think maybe it's cheating. "
Sheila Heti
Life
Think
Trying
" 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
" 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
" 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 think making friends you can work with is a skill like any other, developing those particular kinds of intimacies. They're intimacies like any other, but they grow in a definite direction, not just willy-nilly like normal friendships. "
Sheila Heti
Direction
You
Work
" I remember going over proofs of this book - my first book - back in 2001, in a bar in Toronto called the 'Victory Cafe', and thinking sadly to myself, 'This is a very good manuscript but not a very good book.' I don't know what I meant by that, but I was pretty heartbroken and sure it was true. "
Sheila Heti
Book
Victory
Thinking
" A daughter is more difficult than a rose. "
Sheila Heti
Than
Difficult
More
" 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
" I think I prefer writing books because the work of art begins and ends with you - it's easier to know if you're doing it right, as opposed to writing a play and then waiting around for somebody else to complete it. "
Sheila Heti
Think
Know
Writing
" The thing I worry about is, what happens when your talent flees? Because you see that with writers sometimes: they start writing these awful books. And there's something sort of horrifying about it. "
Sheila Heti
See
You
Writing
" 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
" 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
" 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
" As a journalist, you don't tend to interview people with a view to becoming their friend. You can't expect that. It's not professional. "
Sheila Heti
Friend
Professional
You
" I have this memory of being 15 years old, sitting with a friend on the steps of a little bookstore on Bloor Street in Toronto and saying, 'I'll never take money for my writing!' I had such idealism about this idea of trading your soul for money. "
Sheila Heti
Money
Writing
Soul