Heather O'Neill Quotes

• 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.

  Heather O'Neill

  Song, Believe, Garden

  Heather O'Neill (2014). “Lullabies for Little Criminals”, p.134, Hachette UK

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• 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.

  Heather O'Neill

  Children, Growing Up, Cities

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• 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.

  Heather O'Neill

  Butterfly, Writing, Men

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• Your superhuman power was to be able not to feel. Is it there inside everybody, this self that comes out while you are in captivity? You become the closest approximation of yourself that can tolerate living there.

  Heather O'Neill

  Numbness, Self, Able

  Heather O'Neill (2014). “Lullabies for Little Criminals”, p.139, Hachette UK

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• Estábamos arruinados como sólo los niños pueden estarlo. Teníamos los dedos de los pies teñidos de negro por llevar botas que no eran impermeables. Teníamos los lóbulos de las orejas infectados y anillos verdes en los dedos de joyería barata. Nadie tenía ni siquiera una tableta de chocolate.

  Heather O'Neill

  Kids, Chocolate, Black

  Heather O'Neill (2009). “Lullabies for Little Criminals: A Novel”, p.16, Harper Collins

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• 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.

  Heather O'Neill

  Children, Taken, Thinking

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• 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.

  Heather O'Neill

  Running, Kids, Love Is

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• It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you.

  Heather O'Neill

  Parent, Needs, Dandelions

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• La gente te lo hace pasar mal por ser un niño a los doce años. Ya no querían darte caramelos de Halloween. Te decían cosas como: "Si estuviéramos en la Edad Media, estarías casado y tendrías una granja con un millón de gallinas". Intentaban echarte de la infancia. Una vez que te ibas, no había vuelta atrás, así que tenías que aguantar todo lo que pudieras.

  Heather O'Neill

  Halloween, Kids, Hard Times

  Heather O'Neill (2016). “Lullabies for Little Criminals: A Novel”, p.13, HarperCollins

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

  Heather O'Neill

  Air, Black, Bleach

  Heather O'Neill (2009). “Lullabies for Little Criminals: A Novel”, p.17, Harper Collins

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

  Heather O'Neill

  Children, Believe, Differences

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• 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.

  Heather O'Neill

  Lonely, Children, Love You

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• 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.

  Heather O'Neill

  Unfortunate Things, Childhood, Fiction

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• Lonely children probably wrote the Bible.

  Heather O'Neill

  Lonely, Children, Lonely Child

  Heather O'Neill (2014). “Lullabies for Little Criminals”, p.46, Hachette UK

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• 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.

  Heather O'Neill

  Beautiful, Bird, Imagine

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• 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.

  Heather O'Neill

  Heart, People, Broken

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• 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

  Heather O'Neill

  Years, Choices, Causes

  Heather O'Neill (2014). “Lullabies for Little Criminals”, p.243, Hachette UK

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• 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.

  Heather O'Neill

  Block, Thinking, Snow

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

  Heather O'Neill

  Stars, Sky, Black

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• The ground was silvery, as if some stars had fallen there.

  Heather O'Neill

  Stars, Fallen, Ifs

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• 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.

  Heather O'Neill

  Stars, Children, Fall

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• Cuando eres niño, si ves 'The Jeffersons' con tu familia a las siete en punto, parece un fenómeno natural, como la puesta de sol. El universo es un lugar extraño, muy extraño, cuando de repente ya no puedes usar tu vaso con la Mujer Biónica.

  Heather O'Neill

  Kids, Strange Places, Glasses

  Heather O'Neill (2009). “Lullabies for Little Criminals: A Novel”, p.27, Harper Collins

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• En algún lugar, un gorrión canta en si menor.

  Heather O'Neill

  Singing, Sparrows, Minors

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• 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.

  Heather O'Neill

  Love, Children, Real

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• In the temporary illumination of the headlights, the insects were scribbling out messages from God that we couldn't get.

  Heather O'Neill

  Illumination, Messages, Insects

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