Quotes from Sheila Heti

There's so much to learn in writing and in life, and in any particular era in one's life, it seems like a few concerns have to be dealt with at once or else something really bad could happen. Writing seems like the place to deal with those concerns.

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

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

You don't go to tarot readers or psychics when everything's going well. It's always evidence of rock-bottom.

Nonfiction, to me, feels like an argument, whereas a novel is like a series of questions.

For me, a memoir is supposed to be understood as a representation of your life, whereas a novel is self-consciously symbolic.

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.

Usually, you don't have commitment promises in a friendship. Usually, it just grows.

I've written about women's lives, and I just want to write about them from being a woman. I don't need feminism on top of that when I'm writing.

My feminism is just part of my being - a part of my understanding of the world.

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.

To go on and on about your soul is to miss the whole point of life. I could say that with more certainty if I knew the whole point of life.

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.

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.

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.

I don't wear shoes that are going to give me any pain. I just cannot do that.

I'm happy that I wrote 'How Should a Person Be?' and I wouldn't have written that exact book if we had just done the play. So much of the book is about the anxiety of failure - the failure of the play and the failure of the divorce and the failure of not feeling like a good person.

One good thing about being a woman is we haven't too many examples yet of what a genius looks like.

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.

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.

I do feel it. And I've felt it my whole life, that the supernatural has a role in the world.

It's so hard to live that one needs a support around life. We can't live without some supernatural support.

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.

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.