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" The thing to do when you're feeling ambivalent is to wait. "
Sheila Heti
Ambivalent
Wait
You
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" Stand-up comedians have a very important relationship to Twitter. For them, it's a place to try out material. "
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Out
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Try
" 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
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Feel
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" 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 don't know what that line is between fiction and non-fiction that other people have in their minds, but to me, when I'm writing, it's just like whatever the next sentence should be is the next sentence. It's not this artificial division. "
Sheila Heti
Writing
Know
Line
" I don't think 'Motherhood' is a map for women. I would never say that it's a template for every woman in response to her biology. "
Sheila Heti
Women
Motherhood
Woman
" 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
" I don't wear shoes that are going to give me any pain. I just cannot do that. "
Sheila Heti
Me
Going
Pain
" 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
" People don't know who I am from my clothes, and they don't need to. "
Sheila Heti
Need
People
I Am
" My feminism is just part of my being - a part of my understanding of the world. "
Sheila Heti
World
Just
Feminism
" Fiction is a way for writers to preserve their friendships and their romances! "
Sheila Heti
Fiction
Friendships
Preserve
" 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
" To add something to the world should be the question, not not adding something to the world. "
Sheila Heti
Should
World
Add
" 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
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
" Growing up, I never knew that Raffi turned down celebrity endorsements, TV shows, and specials and refused to make merchandise, but it makes sense given how I think about him: My memories are limited to his voice through the record player and the album covers I stared at. "
Sheila Heti
Think
Memories
Voice
" Everyone's always telling themselves stories about their lives, writers or not. "
Sheila Heti
Stories
Telling
Always
" 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
" 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
" 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
" In 'Sweet Days of Discipline,' the narrator, years after graduating, fortuitously encounters her old friend Frederique at a movie theatre. Frederique invites her home. "
Sheila Heti
Discipline
Theatre
Sweet
" 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
" There's so much anxiety about being understood - and being understood through what you wear. "
Sheila Heti
Wear
Understood
Through
" There's something about a woman's life choices that invites commentary, whether it's been invited or not. "
Sheila Heti
Been
Choices
Life
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" You don't go to tarot readers or psychics when everything's going well. It's always evidence of rock-bottom. "
Sheila Heti
Always
You
Go
" Just because you are alive does not mean you have to give life. "
Sheila Heti
Alive
You
Just Because