Sometimes when you are standing still and itโs snowing, you think that you hear music. You canโt tell where itโs coming from either. I wondered if we all really did have a soundtrack, but we just get so used to it that we canโt hear it anymore, the same way that we block out the sound of our own heartbeat.
Heather O'NeillThe 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'NeillIn 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'NeillWe were broke in a way that only kids can be broke. Our toes were black with dye from wearing boots that weren't waterproof. We had infected ear lobes and green rings around our fingers from cheap jewelry. No one ever even had a chocolate bar.
Heather O'NeillPeople give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, โIf this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with about a million chickens on it.โ They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could.
Heather O'Neill