Heidi Julavits Quotes
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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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If I'd done the discovery before I wrote the book, then there would be nothing to discover. It would feel dutiful instead of exciting.
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Sometimes it can be useful to read your bad reviews.
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I wouldn't be myself if I weren't always trying to be someone else. I only have so much time on this earth and I want to be as many people as possible.
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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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Structure is, for me, the most fun challenge about writing novels.
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I used to have a really sharp memory. And its loss has proven destabilizing from an identity perspective.
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We want to believe we couldn't be replaced, and that the people we love are irreplaceable.
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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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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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We're not saints, any of us. Maybe somebody is, but I don't know those people. But we all know people who behave very smugly and are very egotistical and put you down as a manner of improving their own place in the world or improving their own place in the world.
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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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I've subsequently become conscious of MAKING MEMORIES. Which makes me sound like a scrapbooker.
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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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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'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 always think it's useful to get an outside opinion.