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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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Successful

Group

" 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. "

" 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. "

" A line drawn with love can make us as vulnerable as what the line depicts. "

Sheila Heti

Vulnerable

Make

" Raffi Cavoukian was born in Cairo in 1948 and moved with his Armenian parents to Toronto when he was 10. "

" 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

" A daughter is more difficult than a rose. "

Sheila Heti

Than

Difficult

" 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

" 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

Story

" 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. "

" Today, I defined 'sentimental' to myself as a feeling about the idea of a feeling. "

" 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. "

" No child, through her own will, can pull a mother out of her suffering, and as an adult, I have been very busy. "

" Stand-up comedians have a very important relationship to Twitter. For them, it's a place to try out material. "

" Our delusions of omniscience play a role in our ideas of not only what we want but also what we want to escape. "

" Everyone is their own kind of poet - you can't miss it when their words are written down. "

" Writing plays, I've always felt a little like I'm guessing - less sure of what's good and what's not good. I think that's because it's not a complete work of art. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" For myself, I feel more natural writing stories or novels than writing plays. I feel more like myself, like I can express myself better, and like I have a greater clarity about what I want to do. "

" Tove Jansson was the most successful Finnish illustrator and writer of children's books of her day, and she was the most widely read Finn abroad. She began her life as an artist early - she had her first drawing published at fifteen. "

" I didn't study English literature - I studied philosophy at university - so Kierkegaard, Nietzsche - these people are among the most important writers to me. So my interest is in the big questions more than it is in storytelling. "

Sheila Heti

Important

Study

" I didn't wander into motherhood or nonmotherhood unconsciously, recklessly. I gave it due consideration. "

" 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. "

" I just always try to respond to what I'm most interested in at the moment - that hasn't changed. "