Quotes from Sheila Heti

Women apologize too much, I once decided, and made myself stop, and now found it incredibly difficult to tell anyone I was sorry.

Love is a battle between the sexes in which the man always wins because that's more erotic for everyone!

In the cosmic landscape, plants have front-row seats. God is thrilled to have an audience of creation made up mostly of plant life: trees and bushes, flowers and berries, sitting down to enjoy the show, and saying at intermission, What a romp!

It is the flowers in the soul of the person who put them there that make us happy and enliven our hearts. The beauty of the flowers is a clue to the beauty of a human heart. They are a keyhole into a human heart.

A problem I've always had with fashion magazines is that women are encouraged to copy other women. While I suspect that many men enjoy copying other men (consider the idea of the alpha male and beta males), and while part of what makes a man "superior" is how close he can get to "embodying manliness

Most people live their entire lives with their clothes on, and even if they wanted to, couldn't take them off. Then there are those who cannot put them on. They are the ones who live their lives not just as people but as examples of people. They are destined to expose every part of themselves, so the rest of us can know what it means to be a human.

It wasn't that Mira had met her in some previous life. It was that she was meeting her in this one-and isn't that rare! Why is it so hard to meet in this life? But the deeper question was: What was one supposed to do with such people? Fuck them, love them, or leave them alone? Yet they seemed to call out to be acted upon.

It suddenly seemed like a huge conspiracy to keep women in their thirties—when you finally have some brains and some skills and experience—from doing anything useful with them at all.

I'd never before wanted to uncover all the molecules of shit that were such a part of my deepest being which, once released, would smell forever of the shit that I was, and which nothing--not exile, not fame, could ever disappear. But I threw the shit and the trash and the sand, and for years and years I just threw it. And I began to light up my soul with scenes. I made what I could with what I had. And I finally became a real girl.

Maybe I feel betrayed by the woman inside of me who can't bring herself to do this thing. Or maybe I feel betrayed by my mother, for not devoting herself to me and creating whatever loving memories must be created in a child to make her want to repeat the process again.

But life isn't only where things are exciting; it's where things feel hard and stagnant, too.

It was the sound of him alive, and the very last sound he made. Though the last sound he made was no sound at all-the sound of the breath that did not come.

this daddy longlegs...became like a pet,' I offered. 'I remember that.' 'Not something you could control, but something you could love. But if it had left the bathroom and invaded the bedroom, you probably wouldn't have liked it so much. But keeping it in the bathroom allowed you to love it. Keeping it in there was a sign that you loved it...Barriers. We need them. They let you love someone. Otherwise you might kill them.

She had not understood that the spirit that animated the body of her father animated the body of everything. Trees and the sky were not a backdrop to life, but they were equally life. She thought, I am the daughter of everything.

I am obsessed with shopping for secondhand clothing. Nobody else has it, and it has a story that comes with it.

get nostalgic for being a teenager for this reason. It never occurred to me then to be nice to other people. I look back at that time as a time of great freedom—but that was the great freedom, that I didn't give a fuck. I cannot give a fuck more than I already do. I feel it would be the end of me. Having children is nice. What a great victory to be not-nice. The nicest thing to give the world is a child. Do I ever want to be that nice?

Sometimes I think that in not wanting children, I'm preparing for my old age. I know what I want my old age to look like, more than I know almost anything else: a simple home, a simple life, no one needing me for anything, and not needing anyone the way I do now.

Had anyone suggested at the time that it would not be the Egypt of the pharaohs that would survive and change the moral landscape of the world, but instead a group of Hebrew slaves, it would have seemed the ultimate absurdity.

Life is not a harvest. Just because you have an apple doesn't mean you have an orchard. You have an apple. Put a fence around it. Once you have put a fence around everything you value, then you have the total circle of your heart.

Unwilling to be naked, I had made her naked instead.

It's Sunday now for all you lonely fuckers, but for me it's always Sunday afternoon.

She had thought that when someone died, it would be like they went into a different room. She had not known that life itself transformed itself into into a different room, and trapped you in it without them.

The world is full to brimming with its own shit. A little more from me won't even make a difference—it's only natural. It's to be expected. I should put a lot of shit in the play, so it will be a multicolored shit.

style is about knowing what you like and why you like it, more than anything else. GRACE