Heather O'Neill

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

— Heather O'Neill

Lonely children probably wrote the Bible.

— Heather O'Neill

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

— Heather O'Neill

“Linus Lucas was fourteen years old, a number that made the spoons fall right out of our mouths.”

— Heather O'Neill

“A cat peeped in the window. It had one white paw. One night it had decided to dip it into the reflection…

— Heather O'Neill

The stars are always up in the sky...then when it is perfectly black, they feel less vulnerable and out they come.

— Heather O'Neill

“A young girl’s body is the most dangerous place in the world, as it is the spot where violence is most likely…

— Heather O'Neill

“When I read, I was a philosopher and it was up to me to figure out the meaning of things. Reading made…

— Heather O'Neill

“We confused the indoors with intimacy and electric heating with connection. Every night seemed like the last night because we would all…

— Heather O'Neill

“The cat looked at its paws and frantically back at its body, as if it had just been transformed into a cat…

— Heather O'Neill

“I was trying my best to straighten out my life, but I always ended up in the middle of some festive waste…

— Heather O'Neill

“Being judged by society makes you disregard it altogether after a while. Jean-Michel didn’t know that he shouldn’t get a twelve-year-old drugs.…

— Heather O'Neill

Sometimes when you are standing still and it’s snowing, you think that you hear music. You can’t tell where it’s coming from…

— Heather O'Neill

“Being a woman was a trap. Something would bring you down before you turned twenty-three. The only time the world shows you…

— Heather O'Neill

“She certainly seemed crazy. But she simultaneously made them think that there was nothing in the world wrong with being a crazy…

— 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…

— Heather O'Neill

“The night was a typewriter key that got stuck and kept punching all the letters on top of the others until all…

— Heather O'Neill

Many writers were picked on as children. Why? Because they were weird from the get-go. They were often to be found at…

— Heather O'Neill

“He was and probably still is, to this day, the worst-smelling person I have ever hugged. But it was wonderful. He just…

— Heather O'Neill

“Whereas the Greeks had Zeus and Athena, we had people who still lived in Verdun. They had a lot to bear on…

— Heather O'Neill

“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…

— Heather O'Neill

“my father encouraged me to enter medicine. He told me it was much nobler to worry about humans than about bugs. But…

— 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…

— 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…

— Heather O'Neill

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

— 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

“Drug dealers wouldn’t want to have anything to do with these pathetic specimens. You had to be relaxed and professional to associate…

— Heather O'Neill

“But wasn’t it better to have someone who was always gushing annoyingly about love than someone who was reserved with it?”

— Heather O'Neill

“Fireflies danced around her like embers after someone has thrown a log into the stove.”

— Heather O'Neill

“All the colorful lights had been turned off and the sky was the color of television static.”

— 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.…

— Heather O'Neill

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

“A cat's tail waved above the arm of the couch like an elegant hand in a black glove waving goodbye.”

— Heather O'Neill

“She was as secure as a sixty-year-old woman whose husband has never cheated on her.”

— Heather O'Neill

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

— Heather O'Neill

“I didn’t know how he managed to keep the weight of his secret when the burden of it was crushing me.”

— Heather O'Neill

“They often got my file mixed up and thought that I had gone to juvenile detention for being a prostitute. All I…

— Heather O'Neill

Adolescents are still children in that they can't yet tell the difference between make believe and fiction.

— Heather O'Neill

“God knows who we became when we masturbated. It was like our desire was a spirit that possessed us and took over.”

— Heather O'Neill

“Everything written by any woman was written by all women, because they all benefited from it.”

— Heather O'Neill