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81 " They don't know. It's not their fault. What are they supposed to do when they've been told their whole lives not to believe in fairy tales? "
― Heather O'Neill , Daydreams of Angels
82 " She certainly seemed crazy. But she simultaneously made them think that there was nothing in the world wrong with being a crazy girl. And that maybe the world needed a couple more crazy girls. "
― Heather O'Neill , The Lonely Hearts Hotel
83 " But although she interacted with so many people during the day, no one could actually say that they were close to her. There is an aloofness to the permanently heartbroken, a secrecy. There was something impenetrable about her. There was a door that she had closed, which no one could get in. "
84 " My body never belonged to me. You must have felt that too. If someone wanted to beat me, they could beat me. If someone wanted to lock me in the closet, they could. Childhood is such a perverse injustice, I don't know how anyone survives it without going crazy. But I have a chance to turn the tables. I have a chance to run the streets and be a wealthy woman. No one is ever, ever, ever going to treat me with disrespect again. "
85 " Poor people knew that all good times had to be paid for. "
86 " Is there a difference between acting like a really intelligent person and being a really intelligent person? "
87 " If we all knew that we were all perverts, we might be a lot happier. "
88 " We had started thinking of ourselves not in terms of things that we had done, but in terms of what we were going to do. "
― Heather O'Neill , The Girl Who Was Saturday Night
89 " Being a woman was a trap. Something would bring you down before you were twenty-three. The only time the world shows you any favor, or cuts you any slack, is during that very brief period of courtship where the world is trying to fuck you for the first time. "
90 " There was a scent called Five Minutes Before It Rains. If you put it on your neck, whoever kissed you would cry. "
91 " She went around reading men's minds. She went inside them as though they were bureaus and she were opening their drawers. She looked underneath folded articles of clothing. She found their dirty postcards. She pulled them out and had a look at them. And what lovely things she did find there. "
92 " She didn’t know what it meant to always want to be close to someone. She wanted to have the same experiences as him. She wanted to hit him and have a bruise appear on her body. "
93 " Why had this good-looking moll chosen this effeminate buffoon, they all wanted to know. But Jimmy understood why immediately. Because he allowed her to be free. "
94 " Mothers took your problems from you and fretted about them for you, even if there was no reason on earth why they should, even if you had done everything to create your own mess. "
95 " A girl's desire is like a pretty butterfly. And a man's desire is like a butterfly net. His desire captures and kills her. He turns her into an object to be pinned on a corkboard. I don't think I'm interested in the tyranny of the couple. I'm more interested in what a person does when they're forced to be by themselves. "
96 " We just thought of old age as some sort of clown routine. "
97 " Boys are good at personas. There are a certain number that you can get at the drugstore, like costumes before Halloween. Being cool is pretending that you’re not afraid of anything. But everybody is afraid. Everybody is afraid. "
98 " As soon as I looked at Alphonse's face, I knew that he was dead. I had the strange feeling that I was dead myself. It felt as if I were lying at the bottom of a grave and earth was being thrown on me. When death takes someone you know, he holds you and whispers all his secrets in your ear. "
― Heather O'Neill , Lullabies for Little Criminals
99 " They tried to look punk but came off looking more like cats with mange. Just "
100 " Her heart leaped like a frog out of a child’s fist. "
― Heather O'Neill , When We Lost Our Heads