Heidi Julavits Quotes & Sayings

In the midst of such uncertainty, I cling not to what I know, but what I feel. — Heidi Julavits

You know you're screwed when a Western doctor recommends acupuncture. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits

Our cover has always been really important. For those of you who haven't seen itCharles Burns, who is a graphic artist, does four portraits, so it's split into quadrants and there's four heads, basically - portraits of people. We've actually often thought and freaked out, what if something happened to Charles Burns? Because he's so identified with the cover of our magazine, I don't know what we would do if anything happened to Charles Burns. — Heidi Julavits

I am a jack-of-all-trades. I edit and teach and at times desire to be a clothing designer or an artist (one who doesn't draw or paint or sew) and I write everything but poetry and I am a mother and a social maniac and a misanthrope and a burgeoning self-help guru and a girl who wants to look pretty and a girl who wants to look sexy and a girl who wants to look girly and a woman in her middle forties who wishes not to look like anything at all, who wishes sometimes to vanish. — Heidi Julavits

The sensation felt like spinning too fast on a merry-go-round. Each fraction of a second her eyes focused on a new face in a crowd. Within seconds the face was gone, whisked to a blur, replaced by another face that would just as soon be lost. — Heidi Julavits

When I write, I am trying through the movement of my fingers to reach my head. I'm trying to build a word ladder up to my brain. — Heidi Julavits

The twisty nature of psychic attack - are you being attacked, or did you bring this attack on yourself? - speaks to me of an American cultural paradox we all grapple with. There's the rampant litigiousness of our society, and the desire to blame others for our misfortunes. — Heidi Julavits

Worrying about originality is like worrying about the best place to hang your wall phone. — Heidi Julavits

This is why she doesn't put much stock in so-called secrets, or the meaningfulness of untold recollections that become, in their airtight echo chambers, the supposed stuff of secrets. They are only a way to become retrospectively enraged at someone else so that your own adult weaknesses can be tidily excused. — Heidi Julavits

I obviously read and adore traditional fiction. I teach traditional fiction; I also teach all kinds of not-so-traditional fiction. — Heidi Julavits

Sometimes it can be useful to read your bad reviews. — Heidi Julavits

Structure is, for me, the most fun challenge about writing novels. — Heidi Julavits

I spend far too much time on eBay buying lamps and upholstery remnants. — Heidi Julavits

But as with so may diagnoses it is, in the end, the symptoms that matter, not the cause, because this is what being alive means, this is what being a person means, to be sickened by an illness known as you. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits

My behavior makes perfect sense to me. — Heidi Julavits

I don't usually read my reviews. I've noticed older reviewers are much more bothered by the plot complications. Younger reviews don't seem to be bothered by the complications at all. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits

As a writer, you want to go somewhere else sometimes. You want to vary the terrain that you're exploring. — Heidi Julavits

The belief that one's suffering has a greater cosmic purpose, and is thus more exciting and more noble, well, it made a lot of sense to me. — Heidi Julavits

I wish somebody knew whether or not I'm Jewish. — Heidi Julavits

He was uninterested in art, politics, culture, people. While his brain burrowed through rock toward a very specific knowledge goal, mine preferred to warren the air; his brain operated a drill bit while mine launched a thousand aimless kites that tangled strings or bounced along the invisible currents, disconnected and alone. Cognitively, we were the gravitational negatives of each other. Sometimes I wished I had his brain. But only sometimes. He suffered due to his specialized excesses; he just suffered differently from me. — Heidi Julavits

I always think it's useful to get an outside opinion. — Heidi Julavits

My friend did not want her suspicion - which sustained the possibility that her husband both was and was not having an affair - to disappear by exposing it. — Heidi Julavits

The dreamed outcome of launching a psychic attack can make you feel small and petty. I think for that reason I'm going to refrain from launching any. — Heidi Julavits

A friend of mine urged me to see my pain as an opportunity. And since the same psychic that contacted Dion Fortune had told me that I was a "teacher" - she didn't mean at Columbia, she meant in the spiritual sense - I decided my affliction was the universe telling me that it was time to stop writing fiction and become the spiritual guru I was clearly meant to be. — Heidi Julavits

I am simply looking for a companion with whom to spend my days, a companion who will cherish as much as I the stupidity of living in the moment, and spend every dull, amazing second with me. — Heidi Julavits

To be melancholy is to be self-haunted, and among the many reasons this is an unsatisfactory explanation for living inside a jam jar inside an aquarium, foremost among them is that there are no good stories to tell of your bleak time in a beautiful place, and no specter to blame for the fact that happiness, though it should have been inescapable, evaded you. — Heidi Julavits

In parks, when people veer from the established paths and cut new ones through the grass, these are called "desire lines." Many people have the same desire when it comes to walking, which implies that we all want to get to the same place, and more quickly. — Heidi Julavits

I think female-female relationships interest me so much more because they're so encoded. There is kind of a psychic element that happens within groups of women. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits

I think there's a lot of threshold weeping. Like, am I doing this? Am I really wearing this out in the world? My daughter is very much like that. She will put clothes on and her clothes just make her beside herself. They make her so sad sometimes. And you do realize you feel betrayed sometimes by your own clothing. You put something on that usually protects you and makes you OK, and sometimes you're just not fit for the world and even your best pants can't overcome that feeling for you. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits

When I was writing my first draft, and feeling grandiose, I e-mailed an artist/clothing designer I know and suggested we collaborate on a fashion line inspired by the outfits my characters wore. I regret that we never did that. — Heidi Julavits

Whether I'm writing about plumbers or psychics or psychic plumbers, I want to find a creative space that imprisons me usefully, so I can deviate with purpose. — Heidi Julavits

I think the one reason that writers marry other writers - one of the reasons that I married another writer - was, I fell in love with that writer. But second of all, I had been married before and a source of marital strife was me needing to go away for a couple of weeks to write or it's Saturday and I think I just need to work today and not hang out with you. — Heidi Julavits

No girl I knew, in other words, had babies, but more than a few had had abortions. I'd attended two abortions before my own. I'd been invited along to do the driving, and hold the hands, and sit afterward in the bars and fetch the drinks. The boyfriends, though informed of our activities, were never present. Abortions are women's work, I guess. — Heidi Julavits

I go through life now reminding myself to remember something, and I do this while that something is happening. I'll be experiencing a moment and I'll say to myself, "Remember this!" Otherwise my whole life just blurs by. — Heidi Julavits

I take you for a girl who's eager to grow unstable at the first indication that things can come back to haunt a person, even after she has given them up for dead. — Heidi Julavits

If I can just stop being so stressed out, maybe my cancer will get better! This is far less scary than treating a disease of unknown etiology. — Heidi Julavits

I enjoy a misogynist so long as they have a wicked sense of humor and know, on some level, that they're pigs. This is why I enjoy Philip Roth but not Saul Bellow or James Salter. — Heidi Julavits

I needed to understand this random bad bit of luck as part of a bigger design. Otherwise I was suffering meaninglessly. This made the suffering a lot worse. — Heidi Julavits

Usually I'll write all the way through to an end, and then I go back and try to fix the ending so that it makes sense. I don't think out the plot ahead of time. — Heidi Julavits

I reread books to measure my degree of difference from myself. — Heidi Julavits

Set a good example. Want to fuck yourself so that others want to fuck you too. — Heidi Julavits

Or perhaps it was the crying woman's mention of the unread library books, because truly there was nothing sadder, except a gift that a person has hand made for you, a scarf or a poncho, that, try as you might, you cannot ever see your way into wearing. This is when the cold indifference of the world envelops you, and makes you feel invigorated by emotion but also acutely alone. — Heidi Julavits

I guess what I find so interesting about memory, and its role in a person's identity, is how the attempt to achieve accuracy requires you to remove yourself from your life in an authorial manner. — Heidi Julavits

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. In other words: Home has exceedingly low standards. — Heidi Julavits

But girls . . . girls, mishandled, are a menace. — Heidi Julavits

I calmed myself by walking into my nearby bookstore and marveling at all the books other people had written. So many people had finished and published novels; it couldn't be so hard, right? — Heidi Julavits

We're taught to find the antecedents to our adult failures in childhood traumas, and so we spend our lives looking bacwards and pointing fingers, rather than bucking up and forging ahead. But what if your childhood was all a big misunderstanding? An elaborate ruse? What does that say about failure? Better yet, what does that say about potential? — Heidi Julavits

I surround myself with women who inspire me to be more ambitious, and who constantly astonish me with their magnetism, style, and smarts. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits

If, at some future point, my face collapses around my eyes, I'd probably do something about it. My eyes are where I live, and if people couldn't see them, no one would know me. — Heidi Julavits

Every once in a while when I get a migraine, I like to think, "Who hates me today?" — Heidi Julavits

Like Semmering Academy, the Grove School was a Gothic pile of bricks run by 1950s-era chalk drones, which maintained its cultural viability by perpetuating a weirdly seductive anxiety throughout its community. Mary herself was a victim of the seduction; despite the trying and repetitive emotional requirements of her job, she remained eternally fascinated by the wicker-thin girls and their wicker-thin mothers, all of them favoring dark wool skirts and macintoshes and unreadably far-away expressions; if she squinted, they could have emerged intact from any of the last seven decades. — Heidi Julavits

I don't think fake people living in a fake house in a fake suburb are any less dismissible or believable than a fake psychic attending a fake school in a fake town. Nothing's inherently believable about any kind of fiction, because all of it's untrue. — Heidi Julavits

I can't even tell you what else I imagined. I can only humiliate myself to such a degree; at a certain point it becomes humorous, and this story is not meant to be humorous. This story is meant to winch your ribs open and tamper with your heart. This story is meant to make you realize that your chances of happiness in this world are terribly slim if you lack a fine imagination. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits

I developed a crazy face rash after I got engaged to a guy I must have known somewhere I should not marry. I hadn't articulated this to myself, so my face told the world instead. — Heidi Julavits

A white girl disappears from a white prep school in a white suburb. Nobody knows what happened to her. The overall whiteness of the world is threatened. This must be resolved by whatever means possible. — Heidi Julavits

We want to believe we couldn't be replaced, and that the people we love are irreplaceable. — Heidi Julavits

You should never read online comments if you want to keep thoughts above the belt. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits

There are some writers who are done when they finish a draft because they've thought it through beforehand. Whereas I'll finish a first draft and I'm nowhere near done. — Heidi Julavits

I've subsequently become conscious of MAKING MEMORIES. Which makes me sound like a scrapbooker. — Heidi Julavits

No matter what you wear, not everyone is going to understand what you're saying. — Heidi Julavits

When you are expending much energy on someone else's demise, it's like you weaken your psychic immune system. — Heidi Julavits

To believe you're being psychically attacked gives you an understanding of your illness that no Western doctor can provide; this can be reassuring when you've exhausted the Western doctor tool kit, and the doctors are sending you to acupuncturists for pain relief. — Heidi Julavits

I won't deny that I have a far more productive writing life without the Internet, mostly because I rekindle my ability to concentrate on one thing for a period of longer than three minutes. My curiosity is channeled inward rather than Internet-ward. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits

In most couples there is the person who wins and the person who doesn't. The winner isn't necessarily stronger or smarter or righter. The winner is the person who won't give up, and the non-winner ("loser" is not the correct word for the person who does not win), at a certain point, realizes the battle is a silly one, and the spoils are not worth the extended warfare. — Heidi Julavits

I buy a lot of books I've found via the Internet, whose existences I'd otherwise never have known about. — Heidi Julavits

Maybe the body is taking responsibility where the mind is not. It's scrapbooking for us. — Heidi Julavits

If you agree with an outside person's interpretation of you, that's a happy bit of affirmation. It means you're communicating externally what you believe to be true internally. If you disagree, it helps clarify how you understand yourself. And maybe makes you productively question how to improve your communication skills. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits

During the summers, when I'm in Maine, I work at a desk that's located beyond all tendrilly wi-fi reaches. It takes me a few days to break the constant e-mail-checking habit, then I find I don't want to check my e-mail ever, and often don't for days. — Heidi Julavits

I love this idea of the body as a trauma archive! — Heidi Julavits

I don't think women are, by definition, toxic to one another. I think women are simultaneously competitive toward and idolatrous of each other. I thrive on that challenge and that desire. — Heidi Julavits

At a certain point, it seems more polite to just become the person people assume you to be. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits

People don't hijack planes anymore because that old system of hijacking in order to barter for a prison release or get to a different country no longer works, exactly, because 9/11 recoded the hostage's interpretation of a hijack. If a hijacker isn't trying to use the plane as a missile, then he is in danger of being killed by the hostages. There is no minor terror threat anymore. No mid-level terrorism. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits

Women are responsible for the people in the family having pants. — Heidi Julavits

I used to be as scared of public speaking as I was of sharks. Every time I teach I get an endorphin high off the fact that I did not have a panic attack. I teach and swim in order to measure my improvement as a human. I am no longer terrified of quite so many things. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits

I used to have a really sharp memory. And its loss has proven destabilizing from an identity perspective. — Heidi Julavits

No one was around to publicly shame me, but I am perfectly able to shame myself. And worse -- around myself it is not a matter of appearing to be stupid and heartless; instead I confirm to myself that I am definitively one or the other. — Heidi Julavits

As such, anything is always possible, even if your protagonist is a plumber. But it's the possibility, the limitless possibilities, of any fake life, that make writing about it so challenging. — Heidi Julavits

I have a daughter who, when younger, possessed no barrier between her emotional self and the outside world. Her emotional insides spilled out all over, and, especially when I was sleep-deprived and probably a little paranoid, this really threatened me. It was as if she were embodying and expressing the insecurities and freaked-outedness I never express, and which I've learned over the years to keep hidden. — Heidi Julavits

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. — Heidi Julavits