Heather O'Neill
Heather O'Neill
Heather O'Neill 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...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
CountryCanada
Adolescents are still children in that they can't yet tell the difference between make believe and fiction.
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.
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.
Lonely children probably wrote the Bible.
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.
Becoming a child again is what is impossible. That's what you have a legitimate reason to be upset over. Childhood is the most valuable thing that's taken away from you in life, if you think about it.
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.
Many writers were picked on as children. Why? Because they were weird from the get-go. They were often to be found at the back of the class smelling erasers, or talking to caterpillars, or walking down the street with an encyclopedia balanced on their head.
Somewhere, a sparrow is singing in B minor.
My breath in the cold air was bleach that accidentally spilled on a black t-shirt.
The stars are always up in the sky...then when it is perfectly black, they feel less vulnerable and out they come.
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.
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.
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.