A Quote by Sheila Heti

Many of the traits in my characters are exaggerations of things I see in myself. But in 'How Should a Person Be?' I wasn't trying to write about myself so much as a combination of myself and these women I was seeing in our culture.

Sheila Heti

Quote Topics

About Characters Combination Culture How Many Much Myself Our Person See Seeing Should Things Traits Trying Women Write

Quote Author

Sheila Heti
Canadian - Writer
Born: December 25, 1976

I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work and it creates this strange connection. It's really a way of strangers communicating through this third thing, which is a body of work. But really, I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.

John Darnielle

If I'm one that's afflicted with same-gender attraction, I should strive to see myself in a much broader context... seeing myself as a child of God with whatever my talents may be, whether intellect, or music, or athletics, or somebody that has a compassion to help people, to see myself in a larger setting and thus to see my life in that setting.

Lance B. Wickman

I remember distinctly not seeing myself. I didn't see myself in black culture, white culture, mass culture.

Justin Simien

Our life is so short that every time I see my children, I enjoy them as much as I can. Whenever I can, I enjoy my beloved, my family, my friends, my apprentices. But mainly I enjoy myself, because I am with myself all the time. Why should I spend my precious time with myself judging myself, rejecting myself, creating guilt and shame? Why should I push myself to be angry or jealous? If I don't feel good emotionally, I find out what is causing it and I fix it. Then I can recover my happiness and keep going with my story.

Miguel Angel Ruiz

I cannot write to anyone outside myself--if I tried, it would be a horrible story, flat and lifeless. I write to myself. That's the only person I'm trying to please.

Shannon Hale

I'm constantly trying to look at things from a different view and to put myself into some new perspectives to evolve myself, grow myself, and reinvent myself.

Kali Uchis

I always wrote about myself in the third person. I knew how to promote myself so it sounded intelligent. I know how to package myself.

Lisa Lampanelli

My idea of making time for myself is writing songs. I never stop beating myself up about trying to be productive, so I don't really like to do a lot of things other than write in my journal and write songs.

Lydia Loveless

I started out as a poet who primarily wanted to write about image and moment. Over the years I've been trying to teach myself how to do plot and scene. My first story collection had the most issues with the plotlessness, and when I was writing my second collection I was teaching myself how to make things happen.

Dan Chaon

You can talk yourself out of doing something if you start to think about, "How would this person see it, or that person see it?" So sometimes it's allowing myself to be in it and not talking myself out of it.

Kalup Linzy

Food is not simply nutritional cocaine that I'm injecting in my body. It is about a relationship I have with myself, how I see myself, what I want from myself.

Ronald M. Shaich

Things that I can do myself, I either do by myself, or teach a willing undergraduate who doesn't know how to do those things by doing it for me. Things that I can't do myself, my graduate students should be doing.

John Maeda

I punished myself and avoided my reflection in mirrors and any windows. I would see myself reflected back, and I would look away, trying to pretend I didn't exist, because I hated myself so much.

Margaret Cho

What's wrong with you? I asked myself. You are a happy person. You are an upbeat sort of person. Men smile at you on the subway, women ask you what shampoo you use. Cheer up for Christ's sake, I told myself, relax, you're fine, be happy, Girl. When I talk to myself I call myself Girl.

Jennifer Belle

I don't worry about being exposed. When I'm writing about myself I think about myself as a character. There is a ton of stuff going on in my life that I don't write about. If I need to write that stuff down, I write about myself in my diary.