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Sometimes it can be useful to read your bad reviews.

Heidi Julavits

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Heidi Julavits
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: April 20
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Portland
Maine
Reviews
Useful
Read
Sometimes

More quotes by Heidi Julavits

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I love this idea of the body as a trauma archive!
Heidi Julavits
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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
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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.
Heidi Julavits
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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
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I wish somebody knew whether or not I'm Jewish.
Heidi Julavits
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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
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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
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I obviously read and adore traditional fiction. I teach traditional fiction I also teach all kinds of not-so-traditional fiction.
Heidi Julavits
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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.
Heidi Julavits
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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
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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
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I wont 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
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I want the plot to be as complicated as possible. 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
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I obviously read and adore traditional fiction. I teach traditional fiction, I also teach all kind of not-so-traditional fiction. And since I'm such a plot buff, and I'm really such a narrative buff, I can't seem to relinquish my - not just reliance - but excitement about those traditional techniques.
Heidi Julavits
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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.
Heidi Julavits
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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
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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
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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
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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.
Heidi Julavits
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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