Heidi Julavits Quotes
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When my husband first read a draft, he said, "You spend too much time describing the characters outfits." He was right. I removed much of the clothes talk, but quite a bit remained.
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My husband is always accusing me of being a context-free individual. He asks something and he has no idea where it came from or what it related to. I have to supply him with way more supplementary information than I ever have to supply my female friends.
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Whenever I hang out with my female friends, I feel like context is never needed. They can just say two words about something, it's like hearing the first two notes of a song and you can always identify the song. They can just say a word and I know exactly what they're talking about.
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I really did for a few weeks think, I'm in pain because the world needs me to save it. Which is so ridiculous and egotistical.
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A logic proof is: you get a starting point and an ending point, and you have to get there through all these different steps and tautologies. I approach novel writing that way. When I get to the end I have to go back and connect everything.
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When you are expending much energy on someone else's demise, it's like you weaken your psychic immune system.
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I tell myself it's a virtue, my failure to sleep in my own house, or at all. I tell myself that I spend more hours than most people aware that I am alive, and that over a lifetime this adds up to more living, more aliveness. I am more alive than the rest of my family. Which is my greatest night fear. Which is why I hunt. I don't ever want to be more alive than they are.
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I love this idea of the body as a trauma archive!
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I think what can be most shameful or embarrassing is when our bodies broadcast a secret we'd prefer no one to know. This is why I hate rashes, in particular face rashes.
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I like playing with a popular cliché and making it my own by half-embracing it, half-disemboweling it.
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I'm at that age where I notice friends checking out my face and wondering, Has she been Botoxed? There's a new map there people that are trying to read. I think if I did get any kind of enhancement I would be very public about it. I don't want people wondering - I want them to know.
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Sometimes it can be useful to read your bad reviews.
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Some people just make me feel mentally endangered. Whatever dark stuff is going on in their head, it's coming at me and I need to escape.
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It's fascinating to imagine two successful writers in one house. But when you think about it, it isn't very unusual. In fact, so many writers have writer spouses.
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I've always said that you were too smart to have a profession. Smart people are hopeless in the face of anything actual. They are terrible cooks. They cannot dress themselves. They are children who need guidance and protecting.
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I've subsequently become conscious of MAKING MEMORIES. Which makes me sound like a scrapbooker.
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I always think it's useful to get an outside opinion.