SHEILA HETI

There's so much to learn in writing and in life, and in any particular era in one's life, it seems like a few concerns have to be dealt with at once or else something really bad could happen. Writing seems like the place to deal with those concerns.

If you want to write from life, you can't really write a story. People are always changing, and I think if we didn't look the same day-to-day, and our self weren't always in our body, would we even be the same? The continuity is in our bodies.

The reason I write is because I have questions. What I don't want is for people to forget that I'm a novelist and think I'm a sociologist or something. I don't want to feel trapped into a corner where I don't belong.

An artist's love for what they create is what creates love.

I didn't wander into motherhood or nonmotherhood unconsciously, recklessly. I gave it due consideration.

People don't know who I am from my clothes, and they don't need to.

Usually, you don't have commitment promises in a friendship. Usually, it just grows.

I just always try to respond to what I'm most interested in at the moment - that hasn't changed.

Stand-up comedians have a very important relationship to Twitter. For them, it's a place to try out material.

My feminism is just part of my being - a part of my understanding of the world.

It's so weird how our existence hinges on just absolute crazy chance, but it feels so essential. It's like, 'Nothing would be here if you weren't here,' because you are the centre of your universe.

I wanted to talk to a lot of women about their experiences along the path to motherhood - or along the path to not being a mother.

I have this memory of being 15 years old, sitting with a friend on the steps of a little bookstore on Bloor Street in Toronto and saying, 'I'll never take money for my writing!' I had such idealism about this idea of trading your soul for money.

For me, a memoir is supposed to be understood as a representation of your life, whereas a novel is self-consciously symbolic.

Everyone has to put clothes on in the morning, and it's interesting to see how much people's personal histories come into that decision.

As a journalist, you don't tend to interview people with a view to becoming their friend. You can't expect that. It's not professional.

To add something to the world should be the question, not not adding something to the world.

I think that part of the reason I like collaboration so much is because it's something unexpected coming in, and you have to stretch yourself to absorb it.

Raffi is arguably the world's most famous children's singer.

Just because you are alive does not mean you have to give life.

I'd rather that people could be both entertained and given rest while reading my book than for someone to have to put the book down to take a rest. You can't just be lighting firecrackers all the time.

A daughter is more difficult than a rose.

Toronto is my home. It's where my family is. I think I feel an obligation to be within subway distance of the people who raised me.

You think you're writing the most important book, you think you're writing the most stupid book, and you never really know before it's done that it's going to be done.

I think making friends you can work with is a skill like any other, developing those particular kinds of intimacies. They're intimacies like any other, but they grow in a definite direction, not just willy-nilly like normal friendships.