Quotes from Heather O'Neill

In the temporary illumination of the headlights, the insects were scribbling out messages from God that we couldn't get.

Love is a big and wonderful idea, but life is made up of small things. As a kid, you have nothing to do with the way the world is run; you just have to hurry to catch up with it.

Every day the average person will witness six miracles. But it isn't that we don't believe in miracles—we just don't believe that miracles are miracles. There are so many miracles all around us.

The female body was particularly absorbent when it came to shame. If you wrung out any woman's body, you would discover it was soaked in shame.

Perhaps the most dangerous people in the world are the ones who believe in right and wrong but what they ascribe to as "right" and "wrong" is completely insane. They are bad with the conviction that they are good. That idea is the impetus behind evil.

You see only the beautiful things when you stand still. You only see things that you don't ordinarily notice. The birds are the prettiest things, I imagine.

When you're a kid, if you watch 'The Jeffersons' with your family at seven o'clock, it seems like a natural phenomenon, like the sun setting. The universe is a strange, strange place when all of a sudden you can't use your glass with the Bionic Woman on it any more.

We were broke in a way that only kids can be broke. Our toes were black with dye from wearing boots that weren't waterproof. We had infected ear lobes and green rings around our fingers from cheap jewelry. No one ever even had a chocolate bar.

Men were taught to have so much pride, to go out into the world and make something of themselves. This Depression was deeply humiliating. Since women were taught that they were worthless, they took poverty and hardship less personally.

I have an artistic temperament, which is a really tragic thing.

You know you're my best friend, right?' he said. I shrugged. I guessed it was true. Now that I wasn't going to be at the parade, they would all hate me. Everything had been carefully choreographed, and me not being there would throw them all off. I realized that kids like Theo and me weren't supposed to have real friends. We were supposed to be all alone and confused. By being each other's friend, we were defying our laws of gravity.

When I thought about my old friends Linus Lucas and Theo, I realized they were not really criminals either. They were like me. We were just acting out the strangest, tragic little roles, pretending to be criminals in order to get by. We gave very convincing performances.

I'm a terrible person,' Pierrot said to her. 'I'm quite wicked too', Rose said, and she smiled at him. Pierrot knew that Rose was punished every time she spoke to him. All her words were contraband, treasured items from the black market. A sentence from her was like a pot of jam during wartime.

A cat peeped in the window. It had one white paw. One night it had decided to dip it into the reflection of the moon in a fountain to see what would happen.

The piano was just now telling me how it feels so odd when it rains. The rain can cause you to suddently feel guilty for all the tiny crimes you have committed, like not telling your friend that you love her.

I turned to the page on decorated buttons and tried to ponder their beauty instead of my own loneliness, trying to will myself into being a sociopath.

Your superhuman power was to be able not to feel. Is it there inside everybody, this self that comes out while you are in captivity? You become the closest approximation of yourself that can tolerate living there.

They often got my file mixed up and thought that I had gone to juvenile detention for being a prostitute. All I had done was date a pimp.

When you're young, sex doesn't mean as much, it isn't sacred. Children make the best prostitutes because they're th emost perfunctory about the whole encounter. The whole act is like a dare, like kissing a frog or something. It's nasty while it's happening, but you forget about it soon afterward. And sometimes it isn't even that nasty. Whatever it is, it's so far from love.

Every decent friendship comes with a drop of hatred. But that hatred is like honey in the tea. It makes it addictive.

You should beware of motherless children. They will eat you alive. You will never be loved by anyone the way that you will be loved by a motherless child.

His adolescents are displaced aristocrats who have lost their kingdom and wealth, which was childhood. [On J.D. Salinger]

If they wanted to have time to read a book in the evenings, that was as important as any of Napoleon's ambitions. Because what a triumph it was for any woman to have time for herself—and to be able to do something that benefitted her imagination alone.

I went into the room and sat next to Linus on the bed. I put my hand on his shoulder. I was always surprised at how soft other people were. I thought I felt his heartbeat, although it could have been my own.