172 Quotes by Sheila Heti

boundaries, Sheila. Barriers. We need them. They let you love someone. Otherwise you might kill them.

To fit oneself into the smallest spaces in the hopes of being loved -that is entirely womanly

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.

There’s so much writing I could have done and so many ideas that I had and so many things I wanted to work on that I didn’t. I like too much having things in my head rather than doing the work.

But if my fate is truly my fate, then trying to escape it by doing whatever I can to make my life resemble some more beautiful thing will only lead me more quickly to the place I most fear. If there can be no escape from who I am, then I ought to reach my end honestly, able to tell myself, at least, that I have lived it with all of my being, making choices and deciding, and walking the whole way.

He’s just another man who wants to teach me something.

There are people whose learning is so great, they seem to inhabit a different realm of species-hood entirely. Somehow, they appear untroubled by the nullness. They are filled up with history and legends and beautiful poetry and all the gestures of all the great people down through time. When they talk, they are carried on a sea of their own belonging. It is like they were born to be fathers to us all.

In the transcribing and the editing, you want some retention of how the person speaks – you don’t want to edit out all of the hesitations and idiosyncrasies. And to get people to say something they’ve never said before. That’s big.

That makes our hearts sink more than anything else, really, that the childless and the mothers are equivalent, but it must be so – that there is an exact equivalence and an equality, equal in emptiness and equal in fullness, equal in experiences had and equal in experiences lost, neither path better and neither path worse, neither more frightening or less riddled with fear.