Top 120 Heather O'Neill Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Xavier wasn’t put on the earth to witness the bad htings like Jules and I were. He had been put here to notice lovely things, things that God had created and no one had any complaints about. Leaves turning red in the autumn. How when the tide goes out, the shells are left on the shore. I was put here – Jules and I were both put here – to see sadder things. We had to stand in the rain and explain why the world was a lovely place.”

— Heather O'Neill

52. “I went into the room and sat next to Linus on the bed. I put my hand on his shoulder. I was always surprised at how soft other people were. I thought I felt his heartbeat, although it could have been my own.”

— Heather O'Neill

53. “A young girl’s body is the most dangerous place in the world, as it is the spot where violence is most likely to be enacted.”

— Heather O'Neill

54. “Is there a difference between acting like a really intelligent person and being a really intelligent person?”

— Heather O'Neill

55. “Women aren’t mean the way that men are. They’re full of life and they’re like God in that way.”

— Heather O'Neill

56. “If there was one thing responsible for ruining lives, it was love.”

— Heather O'Neill

57. “In Moscow there were a hundred different words for sadness, and one of them was joy.”

— Heather O'Neill

58. “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.”

— Heather O'Neill

59. “You came out of prison incredibly buff or with an addiction to paperback novels.”

— Heather O'Neill

60. “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.”

— Heather O'Neill

61. “They tried to look punk but came off looking more like cats with mange. Just.”

— Heather O'Neill

62. “But she would never have set eyes on him or given him the time of day if he hadn’t become filthy rich. His money had indeed bought him love. Given what he had seen of the world, the exchange of love for money seemed to be one of the commodities that never wavered – it was as dependable an investment as electricity.”

— Heather O'Neill

63. “My conversation is probably something like the rain. On some days it pours, and then on other days there’s just a clear sky- not a word in sight.”

— Heather O'Neill

64. “Being judged by society makes you disregard it altogether after a while. Jean-Michel didn’t know that he shouldn’t get a twelve-year-old drugs. He didn’t even really know what a twelve-year-old was.”

— Heather O'Neill

65. “We just thought of old age as some sort of clown routine.”

— Heather O'Neill

66. “We only really need one of a good thing.”

— Heather O'Neill

67. “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

68. “Adolescents are still children in that they can’t yet tell the difference between make believe and fiction.”

— Heather O'Neill

69. “Poor people knew that all good times had to be paid for.”

— Heather O'Neill

70. “But your task is to become something much more unique and surprising than anyone your parents could ever imagine you to be. You have to know that the life you have is completely yours.”

— Heather O'Neill

71. “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.”

— Heather O'Neill

72. “Intimacy makes you feel unique. Intimacy makes you feel as though you have been singled out, that someone in the world believes you have special qualities that nobody else has.”

— Heather O'Neill

73. “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.”

— Heather O'Neill

74. “We confused the indoors with intimacy and electric heating with connection. Every night seemed like the last night because we would all freeze to death shortly.”

— Heather O'Neill

75. “I turned to the page on decorated buttons and tried to ponder their beauty instead of my own loneliness, trying to will myself into being a sociopath.”

— Heather O'Neill

76. “She liked the idea of being ruined. She was curious to see what would happen to her if no man would marry her. It seemed like the most likely way to have an adventure.”

— Heather O'Neill

77. “Love is a big and wonderful idea, but life is made up of small things.”

— Heather O'Neill

78. “There was a scent called Five Minutes Before It Rains. If you put it on your neck, whoever kissed you would cry.”

— Heather O'Neill

79. “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

80. “It was terrifying to have the responsibility of living in a world that was filled with so much wonder.”

— Heather O'Neill

81. “Scientists could make a human, but they could not make an artist.”

— Heather O'Neill

82. “A cat’s tail waved above the arm of the couch like an elegant hand in a black glove waving goodbye.”

— Heather O'Neill

83. “The female body was particularly absorbent when it came to shame. If you wrung out any woman’s body, you would discover it was soaked in shame.”

— Heather O'Neill

84. “Men were taught to have so much pride, to go out into the world and make something of themselves. This Depression was deeply humiliating. Since women were taught that they were worthless, they took poverty and hardship less personally.”

— Heather O'Neill

85. “Every decent friendship comes with a drop of hatred. But that hatred is like honey in the tea. It makes it addictive.”

— Heather O'Neill

86. “Every family is a cruel, intransigent monarchy.”

— Heather O'Neill

87. “The home is the most ritualized place in a society; each house is like a religious order with its own ceremonies.”

— Heather O'Neill

88. “I guess it was worth having your self-esteem destroyed if there was a free toy involved.”

— Heather O'Neill

89. “All the colorful lights had been turned off and the sky was the color of television static.”

— Heather O'Neill

90. “I don’t know why I was upset about not being an adult. It was right around the corner. Becoming a child again is what is impossible. That’s what you have 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

91. “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!”

— Heather O'Neill

92. “If they wanted to have time to read a book in the evenings, that was as important as any of Napoleon’s ambitions. Because what a triumph it was for any woman to have time for herself – and to be able to do something that benefitted her imagination alone.”

— Heather O'Neill

93. “Rose had grown up in a room filled with sixty other girls. She was used to the intimacy of other female bodies. When a girl reached out a hand to her, Rose always instinctively grabbed it. Poppy was not used to touching other women. Poppy was that strange thing: an only child.”

— Heather O'Neill

94. “That’s the way I talked when I smoked pot. It was a gift. Every time I smoked up, these pretty phrases and ideas just popped into my head. Usually I went around with so many ugly insecure things flying around in my head that when a pretty thought came to me, it usually died a lonely death, afraid to come out. But when I was high, I simply had to utter it.”

— Heather O'Neill

95. “Violence never gives you a specific feeling that it’s time to knock it off. That’s because it is impossible to satisfy.”

— Heather O'Neill

96. “She’d never seen the ocean before. It was so vast compared to the rivers she’d seen. The sand resembled brown sugar. The seagulls leaped up and down as if they were at the ends of yo-yos. The waves made the sound of someone biting into an apple. When they crashed, they were a hundred thousand chorus girls raising up their dresses at once. And then the water receded again like the train of a jilted bride walking off into the distance.”

— Heather O'Neill

97. “It showed her that a person’s personality could change radically, that you could never really know someone. In fact, you could probably never know yourself. You could think of yourself as the most fun-loving, generous person but actually be cutthroat and indecent.”

— Heather O'Neill

98. “I think music should be terrible. It should make people weep.”

— Heather O'Neill

99. “The sky was the color of lightbulbs that weren’t lit.”

— Heather O'Neill

100. “She felt jealousy pounding like enemy soldiers at the gate.”

— Heather O'Neill