The Lonely Hearts Hotel Quotes

“Being a woman was a trap. Something would bring you down before you turned twenty-three. The only time the world shows you any favor, or cuts you any slack, is during that very brief period of courtship where the world is trying to fuck you for the first time.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“All children are really orphans. At heart, a child has nothing to do with its parents, its background, its last name, its gender, its family trade. It is a brand-new person, and it is born with the only legacy that all individuals inherit when they open their eyes in this world: the
inalienable right to be free.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“Many of them, like him, would never grow old enough to understand that you only go from one hardship to another. And that the best we can hope from life is that it is a wonderful depression.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“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, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“Women were still strange and inscrutable creatures. Men didn’t understand them. And women didn’t understand themselves either. It was always a performance of some sort. Everywhere you went, it was like there was a spotlight shining down on your head. You were on a stage when you were on the trolley. You were being judged and judged and judged. Every minute of your performance was supposed to be incredible and outstanding and sexy.
You were often only an ethical question away from being a prostitute.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“Everything written by any woman was written by all women, because they all benefited from it. If one woman was a genius, it was proof that it was possible for the rest of them.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“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, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“If there was one thing responsible for ruining lives, it was love.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“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.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“Perhaps the most dangerous people in the world are the ones who believe in right and wrong but what they ascribe to as “right” and “wrong” is completely insane. They are bad with the conviction that they are good. That idea is the impetus behind evil.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“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, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“The piano was just now telling me how it feels so odd when it rains. The rain can cause you to suddently feel guilty for all the tiny crimes you have committed, like not telling your friend that you love her.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“I'm a terrible person,' Pierrot said to her.
'I'm quite wicked too', Rose said, and she smiled at him.
Pierrot knew that Rose was punished every time she spoke to him. All her words were contraband, treasured items from the black market. A sentence from her was like a pot of jam during wartime.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“Fireflies danced around her like embers after someone has thrown a log into the stove.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“A girl's desire is like a pretty butterfly. And a man's desire is like a butterfly net. His desire captures and kills her. He turns her into an object to be pinned on a corkboard. I don't think I'm interested in the tyranny of the couple. I'm more interested in what a person does when they're forced to be by themselves.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“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, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“Being a woman was a trap. Something would bring you down before you were twenty-three. The only time the world shows you any favor, or cuts you any slack, is during that very brief period of courtship where the world is trying to fuck you for the first time.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“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, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“Pierrot knew that everything in the world was alive. Everything was composed of molecules that shook and vibrated and hummed. There was no such thing as permanence. Even the most stalwart object—such as a statue in the park—was struggling to keep itself together.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“My body never belonged to me. You must have felt that too. If someone wanted to beat me, they could beat me. If someone wanted to lock me in the closet, they could. Childhood is such a perverse injustice, I don't know how anyone survives it without going crazy. But I have a chance to turn the tables. I have a chance to run the streets and be a wealthy woman. No one is ever, ever, ever going to treat me with disrespect again.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“Is there a difference between acting like a really intelligent person and being a really intelligent person?”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“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, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“Poor people knew that all good times had to be paid for.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“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, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“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, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“as sad things can also have other sides, miraculous ones. If you don’t feel sadness, there are types of happiness and compassion and torture and insight you will never know. Sadness has all sorts of truths that allow you to experience joy.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“All life began underneath the ocean. So I'm giving people a taste of what existence might have been like before civilization.'
'But we were amoebas and tiny shrimplike creatures. We didn't start off in deep-sea-diving outfits.'
'We all come into this world with an oxygen tube in our belly button.'
'True.'
She put her hands up to her own belly. There had so recently been a sea creature evolving in there, trying its best to get its act together. It had perished under the deep, deep, deep sea.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“If we all knew that we were all perverts, we might be a lot happier.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“What city doesn’t like to brag about itself? The gargoyle fauns leaned off the front of the buildings, whispering about their sex lives. The fat catfish in the greenhouse swore they had stock market tips. The horses on the carousel reared their heads, ready for a battle against the mermaid statues in the pond. An electric train rode around and around a tiny mountain in the toy-shop window, while its Lilliputian passengers dreamed in tiny berths.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel

“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.”
― Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel