Like Semmering Academy, the Grove School was a Gothic pile of bricks run by 1950s-era chalk drones, which maintained its cultural viability by perpetuating a weirdly seductive anxiety throughout its community. Mary herself was a victim of the seduction; despite the trying and repetitive emotional requirements of her job, she remained eternally fascinated by the wicker-thin girls and their wicker-thin mothers, all of them favoring dark wool skirts and macintoshes and unreadably far-away expressions; if she squinted, they could have emerged intact from any of the last seven decades.
Heidi JulavitsWe're not saints, any of us. Maybe somebody is, but I don't know those people. But we all know people who behave very smugly and are very egotistical and put you down as a manner of improving their own place in the world or improving their own place in the world.
Heidi JulavitsIf I'd done the discovery before I wrote the book, then there would be nothing to discover. It would feel dutiful instead of exciting.
Heidi JulavitsI go through life now reminding myself to remember something, and I do this while that something is happening. I'll be experiencing a moment and I'll say to myself, "Remember this!" Otherwise my whole life just blurs by.
Heidi Julavits