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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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Heidi Julavits
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: April 20
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Portland
Maine
Memories
Attempt
Interesting
Requires
Persons
Memory
Person
Guess
Find
Identity
Authorial
Life
Role
Accuracy
Roles
Remove
Achieve
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More quotes by Heidi Julavits

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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
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We want to believe we couldn't be replaced, and that the people we love are irreplaceable.
Heidi Julavits
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No matter what you wear, not everyone is going to understand what you're saying.
Heidi Julavits
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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
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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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As a writer, you want to go somewhere else sometimes. You want to vary the terrain that you're exploring.
Heidi Julavits
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Sometimes it can be useful to read your bad reviews.
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 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
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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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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
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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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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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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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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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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 love this idea of the body as a trauma archive!
Heidi Julavits
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When you are expending much energy on someone else's demise, it's like you weaken your psychic immune system.
Heidi Julavits
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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
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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