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Heather O'Neill Biography

Heather O'Neill

Heather O'Neill (born 1973) is a Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist, who published her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, in 2006. The novel was subsequently selected for the 2007 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by singer-songwriter John K. Samson. Lullabies won the competition. The book also won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for eight other major awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Governor General's Award and was longlisted for IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

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Heather O'Neill Quotes

My breath in the cold air was bleach that accidentally spilled on a black t-shirt.

Air, Black, Bleach, Cold

Lonely children probably wrote the Bible.

Bible, Children, Lonely, Lonely Child, Probably

Sometimes when you are standing still and it’s snowing, you think that you hear music. You can’t tell where it’s coming from either. I wondered if we all really did have a soundtrack, but we just get so used to it that we can’t hear it anymore, the same way that we block out the sound of our own heartbeat.

Anymore, Block, Snow, Thinking, Wondered

A lot of children grow up in poverty with flawed parents, but their inner world is still as inherently filled with wonder and innocence as children who are kept away from the city's underbelly.

Children, Cities, Growing Up, Inner, Kept, Underbelly

On of the reasons that I wanted to study literature was because it exposed everything. Writers looked for secrets that had never been mined. Every writer has to invent their own magical language, in order to describe the indescribable. They might seem to be writing in French, English, or Spanish, but really they were writing in the language of butterflies, crows, and hanged men.

Butterfly, Crows, Describe, Invent, Men, Writing

Love is a big and wonderful idea, but life is made up of small things. As a kid, you have nothing to do with the way the world is run; you just have to hurry to catch up with it.

Kids, Love Is, Nothing, Running, Way, Wonderful

I have an artistic temperament, which is a really tragic thing.

Artistic, Tragic, Temperament

From the way that people have always talked about your heart being broken, it sort of seemed to be a one-time thing. Mine seemed to break all the time.

Broken, Heart, People, Sort, Way

I had a ludicrous childhood, but I feel that I was able to profit from a lot of the idiotic and unfortunate things that happened to me by turning them into fiction.

Childhood, Fiction, Idiotic, Ludicrous, Profit, Unfortunate Things

Adolescents are attracted to tragic heroes. That's why rock stars dress like homeless people. Adolescence is a fall. It's when every child becomes an orphan.

Attracted, Children, Fall, Rock, Stars

Adolescents are still children in that they can't yet tell the difference between make believe and fiction.

Believe, Children, Differences, Make, Tell

People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, “If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with about a million chickens on it. ” They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could.

Ages, Chickens, Farm, Halloween, Hard Times, Kids

If you want to get a child to love you, then you should just go hide in the closet for three or for hours. They get down on their knees and pray for you to return. That child will turn you into God. Lonely children probably wrote the Bible.

Children, Lonely, Love You, Pray, Return

When you're a kid, if you watch 'The Jeffersons' with your family at seven o'clock, it seems like a natural phenomenon, like the sun setting. The universe is a strange, strange place when all of a sudden you can't use your glass with the Bionic Woman on it any more.

Glasses, Kids, Natural, Setting, Strange Places, Universe

The real first kiss is the one that tells you what it feels like to be an adult and doesn't let you be a child anymore. The first kiss is the one that you suffer the consequences of. It was as if I had been playing Russian roulette and finally got the cylinder with the bullet in it.

Adult, Children, Let, Love, Real, Russian

You see only the beautiful things when you stand still. You only see things that you don't ordinarily notice. The birds are the prettiest things, I imagine.

Beautiful, Bird, Imagine, Ordinarily, Stand, Things

Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the sidewalk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your parent was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you.

Believe, Front, Garden, Live, Song, Young

In Lullabies, I wanted to capture what I remembered of the drunken babbling of unfortunate twelve-year-olds: their illusions, their ludicrously bad choices, their lack of morality and utter disbelief in cause and effect

Years, Choices, Causes, Utter, Morality

The stars are always up in the sky. . . then when it is perfectly black, they feel less vulnerable and out they come.

Black, Come, Sky, Stars, Vulnerable