Steven Heighton quotes:

It gets too easy to write from the point of view of a male character of my age, with the same cultural frame of reference.

I'm supportive of practical nationalism, like the kind we need in Canada to avoid being absorbed into a much larger country. The kind of nationalism I despise as destructive and infantile is really just tribalism writ large.

Cast a spell and the small flaws don't matter. (From Workbook)

I've been a traveller, but I don't travel so much now. I'm trying to do it vicariously through my writing. I'm trying to write books that will draw readers away from their lives but send them back in a more awakened way.

It's no sin to tell a good story.

The idiot willingness to choose sides is what feeds the abattoir of history.

Let failure be your workshop. See it for what is is: the world walking you through a tough but necessary semester, free of tuition. (from Workbook)

Interest is never enough. If it doesn't haunt you, you'll never write it well. What haunts and obsesses you may, with luck and labour, interest your readers. What merely interests you is sure to bore them. (from Workbook)

To listen to critics, pro or con, and take their words to heart is to subcontract your self-esteem to strangers. (from Workbook)