SELECTED INTERVIEWS
These interviews were conducted by Sheila Heti. Most were published in The Believer magazine, where she worked as Interviews Editor.
Sophie Calle: (PDF) "[My art is] not about telling my life, it’s not about telling you truth. It’s not the truth, obviously. It happened, but it’s not truth. Because when I tell a story, one hour after—it’s not the truth. It’s editing, finding the nice words, writing poetically, having a style. So it’s not about telling the truth." The Believer, June 2012.
John Currin: "Everybody thinks [art] has to be a big bummer, an after-school special about abortion and abuse and cutting and anorexia. But [my wife] Rachel [Feinberg] gave me the idea of making work about being happy." Momus, June 2015.
Rachel Cusk: “Well, you build a novel. You have to build it like a building so that it stays standing when you’re not in it.” The Paris Review, Spring 2020.
Joan Didion: "I remember my husband saying, when Play It as It Lays was about to come out, “This isn’t going to—you’re never going to—this book isn’t going to make it.” And I didn’t think it was going to make it, either. And suddenly it did make it, in a minor way. And from that time on I had more confidence." The Believer, June 2012.
Elena Ferrante: "We [women] need an ethics of our own to oppose that which the male world has imposed on and claimed from us. We need a hierarchy of our own merits and faults, and we need to reckon with truth. But that's only possible if we consider ourselves to be exposed to good and evil like any human being." Brick, November 2016.
Mary Gaitskill: "I’ve noticed that when I’m writing longhand, sometimes I’ll write something and I’ll go, Oh, that’s awful, and I’ll cross it out and I’ll write something over it. And frequently when I go back, I decide that what I crossed out was actually better. When you’re writing on the computer, you don’t cross it out, you just delete it. But now, if I’m not sure, I don’t delete it." The Believer, February 2009.
Dave Hickey: "The principal function of human reason is to rationalize what your lizard brain demands of you. That's my idea. And art and writing come from somewhere down around the lizard brain." The Believer, December 2007.
Chris Kraus: "As soon as we’re concerned with “the political” as opposed to “politics,” we’re dealing with an abstraction. Politics is topical—it’s what’s happening now, and we can either respond in the present or avoid it." The Believer, September 2013.
Mary Midgley: (PDF) "Science is meant to be impartial, isn’t it? Scientists as such aren’t necessarily impartial, but ideology is boiling out of books that get sold as science, because the book is supposed to be a scientific book, whereas the person is really acting as a guru or a prophet who should be judged on the merit of his prophecies." The Believer, February 2008.
Darren O'Donnell: (PDF) "It’s to make this crazy encounter between the adults and these kids, and make the kids feel they’re in control... The feeling of kids running around and having a good time at a family gathering—that vibe can be much more prevalent in the culture if we want it to be." The Believer, May 2011.
Frank Stella: (PDF) "There should be photography museums. There should be video art museums. I don’t need to go to a museum that has painting and great art in it to look at videos. They should have their own place." The Believer, November/December 2008.
Agnes Varda: "When I started my first film, there were three women directors in France. Their films were OK, but I was different." The Believer, October 2009.
Other interviews include conversations with Tamar Adler, Margaret Atwood, Claire-Louise Bennett, Shary Boyle, Dick Cavett, Semi Chellas, Sara Cwynar, Josephine Decker, Daveed Diggs, Lena Dunham, Harmony Korine, John Gall, Dorian Fitzgerald, Sophie Fontanel, Tavi Gevinson, Hilary Harkness, Juliet Jacques, Miranda July, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Micah Lexier, Robert McKee, Deepa Mehta, Maggie Nelson, Stevie Nicks, Emily Nussbaum, Alanis Obomsawin, Lauren Oyler, Peaches, Alison Pill, Judit Polgar, Raffi, Sally Rooney, Phyllis Rose, Laurie Simmons, Vendela Vida, Rufus Wainwright, Adelle Waldman and Charlene Yi.
What Would Twitter Do? was a series for The Believer detailing the Twitter philosophies and strategies of a dozen people who tweet, including Teju Cole, Crylenol, Roxane Gay, Kenneth Goldsmith, Mira Gonzales, Tao Lin, Patricia Lockwood, Christian Lorentzen, Melville House, Kimmy Walters, and Kate Zambreno.