Steven Heighton

Interest is never enough. If it doesn't haunt you, you'll never write it well. What haunts and obsesses you may, with luck…

— Steven Heighton

I'm supportive of practical nationalism, like the kind we need in Canada to avoid being absorbed into a much larger country. The…

— Steven Heighton

Interest is never enough. If it doesn't haunt you, you'll never write it well. What haunts and obsesses you may, with luck…

— Steven Heighton

Lyrical poets have to be in touch with visceral experience. I've always tried to avoid virtual experiences. That's emerging in my fiction.

— Steven Heighton

The idiot willingness to choose sides is what feeds the abattoir of history.

— Steven Heighton

To listen to critics, pro or con, and take their words to heart is to subcontract your self-esteem to strangers. (from Workbook)

— Steven Heighton

“An Elegy, Years After Sarah” So her ceiling a map of stars. First time we made love late afternoon late winter, and…

— Steven Heighton

Cast a spell and the small flaws don't matter. (From Workbook)

— Steven Heighton

I used to be more of a purist about literature. I thought, 'If it's a really propulsive story, then maybe there's something…

— Steven Heighton

“Love . . . requires that you learn to read the lover in her own language, not translate her into yours.”

— Steven Heighton

I've been a traveller, but I don't travel so much now. I'm trying to do it vicariously through my writing. I'm trying…

— Steven Heighton

It's no sin to tell a good story.

— Steven Heighton

“Let failure be your workshop. See it for what is is: the world walking you through a tough but necessary semester, free…

— Steven Heighton

I had a book of essays out in 1997 in which I talked about the increasing virtuality of our lives. I've always…

— Steven Heighton

“Boredom is the laboratory where new enthusiasms prepare themselves,”

— Steven Heighton

“The dreamtime of creative work is a turnstile to eternity. (from Workbok)”

— Steven Heighton

It gets too easy to write from the point of view of a male character of my age, with the same cultural…

— Steven Heighton