There are certain people in whom you can detect the seeds of madness - seeds that have remained dormant only because the people in question have lived relatively comfortable, middle class lives. They function perfectly well in the world, but you can imagine, given a nasty parent, or a prolonged bout of unemployment, how their potential for craziness might have been realized.
Zoë HellerI'm a child in that respect: able to live, physically speaking, on a crumb of anticipation for weeks at a time, but always in danger of crushing the waited-for event with the freight of my excessive hope.
Zoë HellerWhen you live alone, your furnishings, your possessions, are always confronting you with the thinness of your existence.
Zoë HellerIt's hard to resist the magical thinking that the work habits of great writers are the key to their greatness.
Zoë HellerI don't write books for people to be friends with the characters. If you want to find friends, go to a cocktail party.
Zoë HellerFor most people, honesty is such an unusual departure from their standard modus operandi - such an abherration in their workaday mendacity - that they feel obliged to alert you when a moment of sincerity is coming on.
Zoë HellerIt seems to me that my lack of faith is not, as I once thought, a triumph of the rational mind, but rather a failure of the imagination - an inability to tolerate mistery.
Zoë HellerWhen I tried to do something else, everyone behaved as if I was Gypsy Rose Lee trying to paint a Matisse.
Zoë HellerIt's always a disappointing business confronting my own reflection. My body isn't bad. It's a perfectly nice, serviceable body. It's just that the external me- the study, lightly wrinkled, handbagged me- does so little credit to the stuff that's inside.
Zoë HellerIf everybody was so reverent of the institute of marriage, how did all the adultery get committed?
Zoë HellerIt's similar to the way you feel cuddling an infant or a kitten, when you want to squeeze it so hard you'd kill it.
Zoë Heller