Miranda July famous quotes

Some people are uncomfortable with silences. Not me. I’ve never cared much for call and response. Sometimes I will think of something to say and then I ask myself: is it worth it? And it just isn’t.
-- Miranda July

#Thinking #People #Silence

Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into friendship. They can't see the tiny outstretched hands all around them, everywhere, like leaves on trees.
-- Miranda July

#Friendship #Hands #Order

We come from long lines of people destined never to meet.
-- Miranda July

#Long #People #Lines

I laughed and said, Life is easy. What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again.
-- Miranda July

#Life Is #Easy #Said

What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real.
-- Miranda July

#Life #Letting Go #Real

That day I carried the dream around like a full glass of water, moving gracefully so I would not lose any of it.
-- Miranda July

#Dream #Moving #Glasses

I made orange juice from concentrate and showed her the trick of squeezing the juice of one real orange into it. It removes the taste of being frozen. She marveled at this, and I laughed and said, Life is easy. What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again.
-- Miranda July

#Real #Orange #Juice

I cried in English, I cried in french, I cried in all the languages, because tears are the same all around the world.
-- Miranda July

#Tears #Around The World #World

That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea I suck it down as if I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest.
-- Miranda July

#Drinking #Tea #Problem

I gave you things I wasn't sure I even had.
-- Miranda July

There was nothing in this world that was not a con, suddenly I understood this. Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost.
-- Miranda July

#World #This World #Lost

The idea that you might end up in a job that doesn't allow you to be who you are, over the course of a lifetime, is still one of the most chilling nightmares to me. It's a good metaphor for fears I have about losing my soul in some accidental, mundane way. So, to me, these jobs that my characters have are very loaded. They immediately suggest a complex character to me, a woman who is, say, a secretary, but also a vigilante on behalf of her own soul.
-- Miranda July

#Jobs #Writing #Character

Things usually make sense in time, and even bad decisions have their own kind of correctness.
-- Miranda July

#Decision #Single Girl #Kind

Don't wait to be sure. Move, move, move.
-- Miranda July

#Moving #Waiting

Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you.
-- Miranda July

#Sky #Fire #Looks

Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it's worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.
-- Miranda July

#Morning #Thinking #Light

This pain, this dying, this is just normal. This is how life is. In fact, I realize, there never was an earthquake. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy for dreaming of something else.
-- Miranda July

#Dream #Pain #Crazy

But, like ivy, we grow where there is room for us.
-- Miranda July

#Ivy #Rooms #Grows

i wondered if i would spend the rest of my life inventing complicated ways to depress myself..
-- Miranda July

#Depressing #Way #Complicated

And why had Deb's last boyfriend dumped her? I dumped him. Maybe you didn't French-kiss him enough. I promise you that wasn't it. Tell me how many times a day you kissed, and I'll say if it was enough. Four hundred. Not enough.
-- Miranda July

#Kissing #Promise #Four

I steeled myself against laughter; I would rather die than laugh. I didn’t laugh, I did not laugh. But I died, I did die.
-- Miranda July

#Laughter #Laughing

He pulled away, but his eyes held my eyes like hands.
-- Miranda July

#Eye #Hands #His Eyes

In the weeks that followed, we amazed ourselves. Our habits slid apart easily...And our very few intimacies were simply discontinued. Where did they go, those things we did? Were they recycled? Did some new couple in China do them? Were a Swedish man and woman foot to foot at this very moment?
-- Miranda July

#Couple #Men #Feet

If there were a map of the solar system, but instead of stars it showed people and their degrees of separation, my star would be the one you had to travel the most light-years from to get to his. You would die getting to him.
-- Miranda July

#Stars #Light #Years

We don't really believe in mowing the lawn; we do it only to avoid unnecessary engagement with the neighbors.
-- Miranda July

#Believe #Engagement #Mowing

If you were wise enough to know that this life would consist mostly of letting go of things you wanted, then why not get good at the letting go, rather than the trying to have?
-- Miranda July

#Letting Go #Wise #Trying

Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost.
-- Miranda July

#Lost

I was going to die and it was taking forever.
-- Miranda July

#Forever

Very few women have become famous for being who they actually are, nuanced and imperfect. When honesty happens, it's usually couched in self-ridicule or self-help. Dunham doesn't apologize like that-she simply tells her story as if it might be interesting. The result is shocking and radical because it is utterly familiar. Not That Kind of Girl is hilarious, artful, and staggeringly intimate; I read it shivering with recognition.
-- Miranda July

#Girl #Honesty #Self

Sometimes I lie in bed trying to decide which of my friends I truly care about, and I always come to the same conclusion: none of them. I thought these were just my starter friends and the real ones would come along later. But no. These are my real friends.
-- Miranda July

#Real #Lying #Trying

He was worried she would not let him love her with the stain. He had already decided long ago, twenty or thirty minutes ago, that the stain was fine. He had only seen it for a moment, but he was already used to it. It was good. It somehow allowed them to have more.
-- Miranda July

#Long #Twenties #Moments

My earliest memory is aged three, seeing sunlight on water and feeling it was really magical.
-- Miranda July

#Memories #Water #Feelings

I think there's something spiritual in a very day-to-day, mundane existence. It's impossible to articulate, and it's happening now, almost like a perverse secret. . . . That's always sort of fascinating to me.
-- Miranda July

#Spiritual #Thinking #Secret

Did you ever really love her? Not really no. But me? Yes. Even though I have no pizzazz?
-- Miranda July

#Pizzazz

If you are sad, ask yourself why you are sad. Then pick up the phone and call someone and tell him the answer to the question. If you don't know anyone, call the operator and tell him. Most people don't know that the operator has to listen, it is a law. Also, the postman is not allowed to go inside your house, but you can talk to him on public property for up to four minutes or until he wants to go, whichever comes first.
-- Miranda July

#Phones #Law #People

In an ideal world, we would have been orphans. We felt like orphans and we felt deserving of the pity that orphans get, but embarrassingly enough, we had parents.
-- Miranda July

#Parent #World #Pity

When she saw my messy desk, she said she was the same way, and there was no dust on the TV, and I was easy to love. People just need a little help because they are so used to not loving. It's like scoring the clay to make another piece of clay stick to it.
-- Miranda July

#Dust #People #Needs

She never inquired, but she never recoiled, either. This is a quality that I look for in a person, not recoiling.
-- Miranda July

#Quality #Looks #Persons

She bludgeoned me with a look of such limitless compassion that I immediately began to cry.
-- Miranda July

#Compassion #Looks #Cry

Would she understand that time had stopped while she was gone.
-- Miranda July

#Gone

I looked at other couples and wondered how they could be so calm about it. They held hands as if they weren't even holding hands. When Steve and I held hands, I had to keep looking down to marvel at it. There was my hand, the same hand I've always had - oh, but look! What is it holding? It's holding Steve's hand! Who is Steve? My three-dimensional boyfriend. Each day I wondered what would happen next. What happens when you stop wanting, when you are happy. I supposed I would go on being happy forever. I knew I would not mess things up by growing bored. I had done that once before.
-- Miranda July

#Couple #Hands #Bored

This person realizes that staying home means blowing off everyone this person has ever known. But the desire to stay in is very strong. This person wants to run a bath and then read in bed.
-- Miranda July

#Running #Strong #Mean

I really did not feel okay about any of this, and there was really nothing I could do about any of it.
-- Miranda July

#Okay #Feels

... we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.
-- Miranda July

#Running #World #Hello

I went to the bedroom and lay on the floor, so as not to mess up the covers.
-- Miranda July

#Bedroom #Mess

Sometimes I would make left turns all the way around a block, and when I returned to the original intersection, I would feel disappointed to find all the drivers were new. It wasn't like a square dance, where you miraculously end up with your original partner, laughing and feeling giddily relieved to find him after dancing with everyone else in the world. Instead, they swung around and kept on going, some people were at work by now, or halfway to the airport. In fact, driving might be the thing most opposite of dancing.
-- Miranda July

#Block #Airports #Squares

I asked myself if I would kill my parents to save his life, a question I had been posing since I was fifteen. The answer always used to be yes. But in time, all those boys had faded away, and my parents were still there. I was now less and less willing to kill them for anyone; in fact, I worried for their health. In this case, however, I had to say yes. Yes, I would.
-- Miranda July

#Boys #Parent #Answers

I looked out the window for other passengers in love with their drivers, but we were well disguised, we pretended boredom and prayed for traffic.
-- Miranda July

#Boredom #Window #Traffic

Some may say that such a girl is not ready for a relationship with a man, especially a man in his late sixties. But to that I say: We don't know anything. We don't know how to cure a cold or what dogs are thinking. We do terrible things, we make wars, we kill people out of greed. So who are we to say how to love. I wouldn't force her. I wouldn't have to. She would want me. We would be in love. What do you know. You don't know anything. Call me when you've cured AIDS, give me a ring then and I'll listen.
-- Miranda July

#Girl #Dog #War

They wordlessly excused each other for not loving each other as much as they had planned to. There were empty rooms in the house where they had meant to put their love, and they worked together to fill these rooms with midcentury modern furniture. ("Birthmark").
-- Miranda July

#House #Together #Rooms

He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs.
-- Miranda July

#Air #Dust #Doubt

Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the earth again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet day after day, alone.
-- Miranda July

#Revenge #Knives #People