Sheila Heti

What of the strength of our connections with certain people, and the weakness of our connections with certain other ones?

As the past cooled, it changed states. It had once been a solid, then it became a gas. Or it had been a gas first, then it became a liquid, and she was left holding the muck of it in her hands.

A writer could suspend their soul in language, making the souls of writers like droplets of oil, suspended in the sea of life.

Perhaps her heart got tired long ago, and collapsed and was left by the side of the road. Maybe one day it will start to feel again. Maybe it has run out of feelings. Anything can run out of anything. A thought can run out of words.

The last thing that’s needed is to judge your own heart, but then that’s the first thing you go and do. A heart rushes to judge itself. A heart should have better things to do. A heart doesn’t.

lights at Christmastime made her think that an intuition of some other realm wasn’t completely gone from us; that humans still felt something,

She would have done her best to remain small.

there’s a kind of vanity to thinking you’re the only decider, or that making good decisions will keep you alive, because your cells are making decisions, too

Were we the lucky ones, to have been chosen to live in this terrible time—to have been chosen to live in this heartbreaking time—as any moment in human civilization will break your heart, but none more so than the end?

that sometimes a person is meant to move forward in the world with the one they love at a distance, and that the distance is there to make it more beautiful. To find the right distance from everything in life is the most important thing. To stand at the right distance, like God standing back from the canvas—for you can’t see anything if you’re too up close, and you can’t see anything if you’re too far back.

You know the gods consider you dangerous if you are tired all the time.