All Time Famous Zoë Heller Quotes

Zoë Heller is a talented British novelist and journalist known for her incisive wit and insightful storytelling. She has penned several well-received novels, including “Notes on a Scandal,” which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003 and adapted into a successful film starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. Heller’s writing often delves into complex human relationships, societal issues, and the intricacies of morality with a sharp and observant style. Her work resonates with readers for its depth and compelling narrative voice.

Zoë Heller Quotes

1. “Somewhere between sanity and madness lays a fine line, for some it is a tightrope walked daily, a fight for balance to be won or lost. That fight is lost one of two ways. Some simply lose their balance and fall, others are pushed.”
— Zoë Heller

2. “Always mind the distance between your dreams and your reality.”
— Zoë Heller

3. “For most people, honesty is such an unusual departure from their standard modus operandi – such an aberration in their workaday mendacity – that they feel obliged to alert you when a moment of sincerity is coming on.”
— Zoë Heller

4. “We are bound by the secrets we share.”
— Zoë Heller

5. “It’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, hand bagged me- does so little credit to the stuff that’s inside.”
— Zoë Heller

6. “It’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

7. “If everybody was so reverent of the institute of marriage, how did all the adultery get committed?”
— Zoë Heller

8. “I’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 Heller

9. “When you live alone, your furnishings, your possessions, are always confronting you with the thinness of your existence.”
— Zoë Heller

10. “It 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 mystery.”
— Zoë Heller

11. “It’s hard to resist the magical thinking that the work habits of great writers are the key to their greatness.”
— Zoë Heller

12. “When I tried to do something else, everyone behaved as if I was Gypsy Rose Lee trying to paint a Matisse.”
— Zoë Heller

13. “I don’t write books for people to be friends with the characters. If you want to find friends, go to a cocktail party.”
— Zoë Heller

14. “It’s clear that politeness to one’s elders can’t always be justified on the basis of the elder’s superior wisdom. It’s just that it’s not attractive to see a young person answering an older person back.”
— Zoë Heller