Heidi Julavits
Heidi Julavits
Heidi Suzanne Julavits is an American author and co-editor of The Believer magazine. She has been published in The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 2, Esquire, Culture+Travel, Story, Zoetrope All-Story, and McSweeney’s Quarterly. Her novels include The Mineral Palace, The Effect of Living Backwards, The Uses of Enchantment, and The Vanishers...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
Heidi Julavits quotes about
home standards lows
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. In other words: Home has exceedingly low standards.
half my-own
I like playing with a popular cliché and making it my own by half-embracing it, half-disemboweling it.
ebay too-much upholstery
I spend far too much time on eBay buying lamps and upholstery remnants.
humorous heart imagination
I can't even tell you what else I imagined. I can only humiliate myself to such a degree; at a certain point it becomes humorous, and this story is not meant to be humorous. This story is meant to winch your ribs open and tamper with your heart. This story is meant to make you realize that your chances of happiness in this world are terribly slim if you lack a fine imagination.
children smart people
I've always said that you were too smart to have a profession. Smart people are hopeless in the face of anything actual. They are terrible cooks. They cannot dress themselves. They are children who need guidance and protecting.
book people marveling
I calmed myself by walking into my nearby bookstore and marveling at all the books other people had written. So many people had finished and published novels; it couldn’t be so hard, right?
sleep night people
I tell myself it's a virtue, my failure to sleep in my own house, or at all. I tell myself that I spend more hours than most people aware that I am alive, and that over a lifetime this adds up to more living, more aliveness. I am more alive than the rest of my family. Which is my greatest night fear. Which is why I hunt. I don't ever want to be more alive than they are.
artist people what-if
Our cover has always been really important. For those of you who haven’t seen itCharles Burns, who is a graphic artist, does four portraits, so it’s split into quadrants and there’s four heads, basically—portraits of people. We’ve actually often thought and freaked out, what if something happened to Charles Burns? Because he’s so identified with the cover of our magazine, I don’t know what we would do if anything happened to Charles Burns.
psychics desire our-society
The twisty nature of psychic attack - are you being attacked, or did you bring this attack on yourself? - speaks to me of an American cultural paradox we all grapple with. There's the rampant litigiousness of our society, and the desire to blame others for our misfortunes.
spiritual teacher pain
A friend of mine urged me to see my pain as an opportunity. And since the same psychic that contacted Dion Fortune had told me that I was a "teacher" - she didn't mean at Columbia, she meant in the spiritual sense - I decided my affliction was the universe telling me that it was time to stop writing fiction and become the spiritual guru I was clearly meant to be.
smart inspire style
I surround myself with women who inspire me to be more ambitious, and who constantly astonish me with their magnetism, style, and smarts.
always-trying people want
I wouldn't be myself if I weren't always trying to be someone else. I only have so much time on this earth and I want to be as many people as possible.
eye people faces
If, at some future point, my face collapses around my eyes, I'd probably do something about it. My eyes are where I live, and if people couldn't see them, no one would know me.
husband character clothes
When my husband first read a draft, he said, "You spend too much time describing the characters' outfits." He was right. I removed much of the clothes talk, but quite a bit remained.