Steven Heighton Quotes

Canada, Novelist
August 14, 1961 – April, 19, 2022.

Steven Heighton was a Canadian novelist, short story writer and poet. He is the author of fourteen books, including three short story collections, four novels and six poetry collections. His most recent book, the novel The Nightingale Won't Let You Sleep, was published in 2017.

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 to write books that will draw readers away from their lives but send them back in a more awakened way.

Steven Heighton
- Books
- Back
- Readers
I used to be more of a purist about literature. I thought, 'If it's a really propulsive story, then maybe there's something unliterary about it.'

Steven Heighton
- Literature
- Story
- Purist

I had a book of essays out in 1997 in which I talked about the increasing virtuality of our lives. I've always been afraid of that in my own life.

Steven Heighton
- Life
- Book
- Virtuality
Boredom is the laboratory where new enthusiasms prepare themselves.

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
- Experience
- Poet
- Fiction
It gets too easy to write from the point of view of a male character of my age, with the same cultural frame of reference.

Steven Heighton
- Age
- Write
- View
It's no sin to tell a good story.

Steven Heighton
- Story
- Sin
- Tell
The dreamtime of creative work is a turnstile to eternity.

Steven Heighton
- Work
- Dream
- Eternity

I'm supportive of practical nationalism, like the kind we need in Canada to avoid being absorbed into a much larger country. The kind of nationalism I despise as destructive and infantile is really just tribalism writ large.

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

Steven Heighton
- History
- Choose
- Sides