Heather O'neill Quotes

Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the sidewalk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your parent was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you.

~ Heather O'neill

Women were still strange and inscrutable creatures. Men didn’t understand them. And women didn’t understand themselves either. It was always a performance of some sort. Everywhere you went, it was like there was a spotlight shining down on your head. You were on a stage when you were on the trolley. You were being judged and judged and judged. Every minute of your performance was supposed to be incredible and outstanding and sexy.You were often only an ethical question away from being a prostitute.

~ Heather O'neill

From the way that people have always talked about your heart being broken, it sort of seemed to be a one-time thing. Mine seemed to break all the time.

~ Heather O'neill

The smallest a family can be is two members, and that was Jules and me.

~ Heather O'neill

Oh, we had a lot of sex back then in Montreal; it wasn’t just me. Blame it on the cold. The roses in everyone’s cheeks made them seem way more appealing than they actually were. We confused the indoors with intimacy and electric heating with connection.

~ Heather O'neill

Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the side walk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your partner was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you

~ Heather O'neill

On of the reasons that I wanted to study literature was because it exposed everything. Writers looked for secrets that had never been mined. Every writer has to invent their own magical language, in order to describe the indescribable. They might seem to be writing in French, English, or Spanish, but really they were writing in the language of butterflies, crows, and hanged men.

~ Heather O'neill

People gave you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, If this was the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with a million chickens on it. They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could. Marika was beckoning from the other side.

~ Heather O'neill

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.

~ Heather O'neill

That was desire messing with physics: putting its finger on the record and then slowing it down, making sure you heard every word spoken, and memorized it.

~ Heather O'neill

Adam was charming and spoke perfect French. Like many anglophones in Montréal, he actually spoke French better than we did. They knew exactly which verbs to use in the same way that people knew which utensils to use while eating at a fancy dinner. It was very proper because they learned it from books. They didn’t know slang or how to curse. They didn’t know how to do anything other than be proper and reserved. It was state-sponsored, dry-clean-only French.

~ Heather O'neill

Childhood is the most valuable thing that's taken away from you in life, if you think about it.

~ Heather O'neill

You feel as if everybody has been given an instruction manual on how to be likable, but you didn’t get it. And they are all sold out now. And if you are what you eat, then you must have surely spent the last few years of your life eating dog food and cat shit. Because when you look in the mirror, it is all that you see.

~ Heather O'neill

You feel as if everybody has been given an instruction manual on how to be likable, but you didn't get it. And they all sold out now. And if you are what you eat, then you must have surely spent the last few years of your life eating dog food and cat shit. Because when you look in the mirror, it is all that you see.

~ Heather O'neill

The ground was silvery, as if some stars had fallen there.

~ Heather O'neill

People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with about a million chickens on it. They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could.

~ Heather O'neill

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

~ Heather O'neill

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.

~ Heather O'neill

I stumbled out into the street, hoping that I looked like a drunken sailor. Everything was all topsy-turvy because my eyes were filled with tears. I clutched my shoes to my chest as I went. I cried loudly, not even bothering to wipe the tears and snot off my face. I just let it all pour down, allowing everybody walking by to see what this world had done to me. If a kid my age walks down the street in her socks, crying her eyes out, then it makes it a bad neighborhood. I was glad I was making their world a shitty place to live.

~ Heather O'neill

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.

~ Heather O'neill

Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the side walk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your partner was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you.

~ Heather O'neill

I had to admit that I had a strong tendency to date jokers. I couldn’t say no to them. I would sit across from someone I was dating and try to imagine who in the entire world would date this nimrod other than me. But I always had to have a boyfriend. They distracted me from being sad. They baffled me with their stupidity. I refused to believe that finding love was difficult.

~ Heather O'neill

Women aren't mean the way that men are. They're full of life and they're like God in that way.

~ Heather O'neill

I've been all over the place in all kinds of living situations. Due to the fact that my mind is my own worst enemy. In a way I am perpetually and permanently in a state of rehabilitation m in an attempt to rehabilitate from the shock of being born.Some people are too sensitive to withstand that.

~ Heather O'neill

It might seem like the easier way to get rid of a poet would be just to take him out to the backyard, have him kneel between the cans with tomato plants in them and put a bullet in his brain. But they knew from history that it doesn't work to kill a writer. Every time you shoot a poet,a dozen new ones are born. It's like plucking a grey hair.

~ Heather O'neill

The home is the most ritualized place in a society, each house is like a religious order with its own ceremonies.

~ Heather O'neill

I was always moved when mean people were suddenly nice to me. It was a weakness that would lead me into some bad relationships later in life.

~ Heather O'neill

Intimacy makes you feel unique. Intimacy makes you feel as though you have been singled out, that someone in the world believes you have special qualities that nobody else has.

~ Heather O'neill