Home > Author > Heather O'Neill
161 " That’s because we’re girls. We’re supposed to only have emotions. We aren’t even allowed to have thoughts. And it’s fine to feel sad and happy and mad and in love—but those are just moods. Emotions can’t get anything done. An emotion is just a reaction. You don’t only want to be having reactions in this lifetime. You need to be having actions too, thoughtful actions. "
― Heather O'Neill , The Lonely Hearts Hotel
162 " When I open a book now, I was seized with desperation. I felt as if I was madly in love. It was as if I were in a confession booth and the characters in the book were on the other side telling me their most intimate secrets. When I read, I was a philosopher and it was up to me to figure out the meaning of things. Reading made me feel as if I were the center of the universe. "
― Heather O'Neill , Lullabies for Little Criminals
163 " Well, my darling, you can be lazy when you're lying in your coffin. -Rose "
164 " Every day the average person will witness six miracles. But it isn't that we don't believe in miracles-we just don't believe that miracles are miriacles. There are so many miracles all around us. "
165 " Love was a paltry, meek thing; it was guilt that spoke in such operatic statements. "
166 " Every day the average person will witness six miracles. But it isn't that we don't believe in miracles-we just don't believe that miracles are miracles. There are so many miracles all around us. "
167 " I became the man that I am in order to look down on people. That’s why a doctor found a vaccine for smallpox, you know, not because he was interested in helping out all those sick people, but because he wanted to make all his doctor friends jealous. "
168 " That’s what money wanted. It wanted to be spent. And it really wanted to be spent on luxury items. Its greatest thrill was just to be gambled away. It wanted to change hands. It wanted to find itself at the racetrack, it wanted to be thrown into the center of the table at a casino. Money is a masochist. "
169 " People gave 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. "
170 " There was this professional hockey player that I liked. I imagined him watching at the parade and falling in love with me. It didn't occur to me that he probably wasn't interested in twelve-year-olds. "
171 " Board games were invented to keep people from thinking so they won't plan a revolution. "
172 " I guess it was worth having your self-esteem destroyed if there was a free toy involved. "
173 " There was a way that you could sleep properly when a house had been straightened up, when all the Ranger Ricks were put up on the shelf and the toys were put in the plastic box and tomorrow's clothes were laid out neatly on a chair. But then again, when everything was left out all over the floor and the dishes were still in the sink, there was a way that you could dream. "
174 " You can learn how to be an aristocrat by following a few rules in a very short book. There is nothing to it.” He gave the boy a small copy of a book called Manners for the Perfect Gentry. He taught Pierrot to hold his chin up higher and to cry out that he didn’t know why on earth he wasn’t in Italy. "
175 " It made me sick to my stomach thinking about why I'd been slapped. Slapping is never a good thing, but there should at least be some sort of legitimate reason behind it, like an exclamation mark needs to follow an exclamatory sentence. I remembered the teacher who'd made fun of me for doing that. You can't just put an exclamatory sentence anywhere! "
176 " Ridiculous. You guys are going to have the most boring documentary on earth," I said and stormed inside."Could you walk in the building again, but slower and don't slam the door," Hugo called after me. "
― Heather O'Neill , The Girl Who Was Saturday Night
177 " They took turns looking deep, deep into the universe: Saturn like a knee that had been dipped in iodine, Neptune like a peach covered in mold, Jupiter like a half sucked jawbreaker, Mercury like a large shooter marble, galaxies like crushed candy, galaxies like the suds from a bubble bath blown off the palm of your hand. "
178 " They had this angry look about them, as if they had been falling off swings all day. "
179 " The only people who had any actual grasp on morality were the under-eight demographic. They hadn’t created all sorts of loopholes in their understanding of it. Children are born with eyes as large as those of adults. Children keep theirs wide open. And children know, without a doubt, that there is a difference between right and wrong. "
180 " Nothing really matters on a Sunday,” his muffled voice said from under the jacket. “Everybody gets to have a day off from who they actually are. Don’t you think? Your crimes don’t count, your achievements don’t matter. You just have to curl up in your bed and take a lovely siesta. You are both nothing and everything in your dreams.” What "