Miranda July Quotes & Sayings

We held each other's hands and laughed with feigned embarrassment that gradually took hold and became real. — Miranda July

It would require constant vigilance to not replace each person with my own fictional version of them. — Miranda July

I hated my job, but I liked that I could do it — Miranda July

I spend a lot of time obsessing about getting a dignified eight hours' sleep. — Miranda July

Finally, in a low whisper, he said, "I think I might be a terrible person." For a split second I believed him - I thought he was about to confess a crime, maybe a murder. Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before we ask someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing. "No, — Miranda July

LA isn't a walking city, or a subway city, so if someone isn't in my house or my car we'll never be together, not even for a moment. And just to be absolutely sure of that, when I leave my car my iPhone escorts me, letting everyone else in the post office know that I'm not really with them, I'm with my own people, who are so hilarious that I can't help smiling to myself as I text them back. — Miranda July

It was an act of devotion. A little like writing or loving someone - it doesn't always feel worthwhile, but not giving up somehow creates unexpected meaning over time. — Miranda July

I kept getting older while he stayed young, my tiny husband. — Miranda July

The things keeping you back-these embarrassing, boring, stupid obstacles-are the heart of what it is to be human. They're the whole reason for making and needing art. So you might as well go ahead and begin in whatever way you can right now. — Miranda July

I was patience defined, patience misspelled, patience sounded out slowly, letter by letter, with the t pronounced shh. — Miranda July

You will eat, you will laugh at stupid things, you will stay up all night just to see what it feels like, you will fall painfully in love, you will have babies of your own, you will doubt and regret and yearn and keep a secret. You will get old and decrepit, and you will die, exhausted from all that living. — Miranda July

Show us life, now — Miranda July

The boy was growing bored and this was a form of growing up. — Miranda July

I was actually writhing in heartache, as if I were a single muscle whose purpose was to mourn. — Miranda July

After I had my son I looked everywhere for a book that might serve as some kind of mirror. I bought so many silly books. Now I see what the problem was: I wanted a book about time-about mortality. I can't think of a writer who is at once so experimentally daring and so rigorously uncompromising as Sarah Manguso. Ongoingness is an incredibly elegant, wise book, and I loved it. — Miranda July

Somewhat predictably, I'm much more comfortable in front of an audience - and a big audience is even better - than faced with one stranger. This always seems like a bit of a failing on my part, as a human. I think that's also why I put myself situations where I'm forced to engage in other ways. — Miranda July

I walked down the hall and saw that [she] was sitting on the floor next to a chair. This is always a bad sign. It's a slippery slope, and it's best just to sit in chairs, to eat when hungry, to sleep and rise and work. But we have all been there. Chairs are for people, and you're not sure if you are one. — Miranda July

My job is to have new ideas and take risks every day, so I'm always looking forward to the next thing being done or making the next thing that I haven't yet gotten to. That's sort of the constant in my life. — Miranda July

He loved me. He was a complex person with layers of percolating emotions, some of them spiritual, some tortured in a more secular way, and he burned for me. This complicated flame of being was mine. — Miranda July

Why do you think we are the only animal that kisses? She was near again.
Because the area in front of our faces is our most intimate zone. She drew a breath. This is why humans are the only romantic animal! — Miranda July

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

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

Was everything redneck actually mystical? — Miranda July

I typed "royal family" into a dream-interpretation website, but they didn't have that in their database, so then I typed "butt" and hit "interpret," and this came back: To see your buttocks in your dream represents your instincts and urges. It also said: To dream that your buttocks are misshapen suggests undeveloped or wounded aspects of your psyche. But my butt was shaped all right, so that let me know my psyche was developed, and the first part told me to trust my instincts, to trust my butt, the butt that trusted him. — Miranda July

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

I definitely wanted much more normalness than what was around me. — Miranda July

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

She looked utterly betrayed, as betrayed as the most betrayed person in Shakespeare. — Miranda July

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

I felt like I could do this forever, because nothing mattered more than anything else. — Miranda July

It was like a dream, where the most unlikely person can't get enough of you- a movie star or someone's husband. How can this be? But the attraction is mutual and undeniable; it is the reason for itself. — Miranda July

It wasn't good, he wasn't good, he did not have good intentions. I stood there, and he stood there. He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. — Miranda July

The life you live in front of an audience is like an altered state - it's not totally real. I'm always, even in the course of one day, trying to find ways to balance both sides. — Miranda July

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

When I was fifteen, a dark shape came into my room at night. It was dark, but it glowed, which is the first of many facts you will have to tackle with your imagination. It wasn't in the shape of a person, but right away I knew it was like a person in every way except for how it looked. As it turns out, our looks are not the main thing that makes us human. — Miranda July

The level of control, that's part of what's so appealing about filmmaking - you have so much control over what the reader, the viewer, is noticing from moment to moment. They can't do that boring boring boring thing as easily. — Miranda July

For a split second I felt as though she was nobody special in the larger scheme of my life. She was just some girl who had tied me to her leg to help her sink when she jumped off the bridge. Then I blinked and was in love with her again. — Miranda July

I've always been terrified of getting used to something that is actually killing me-a relationship or a job. But in those cases, you can count on a friend to say something. The Internet is different, because all my friends are in the same relationship. — Miranda July

That said, the spaces between my features are in perfect proportion to each other. So far no one has noticed this. Also my ears: darling little shells. I wear my hair tucked behind them and try to enter crowded rooms ear-first, walking sideways. — Miranda July

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

Since I started making art, I've always had some kind of project that was really about and for other people, because I think I just need that balance to feel sane myself - you know? — Miranda July

Was I like honey thinking it's a small bear, not realizing the bear is just the shape of its bottle? -Cheryl — Miranda July

We thrust our babies into the air again and again, showing them what it felt like to be a mother, to be terrifyingly in love without the option of getting off. — Miranda July

When you can see the beauty of a tree, then you will know what love is. — Miranda July

I had forgotten about the baby. Until then she had been giving birth to birth - to contractions and noises and liquids. There was someone in there. We — Miranda July

Where do we come from? Do souls really exist? I can't answer these questions, especially not at 6am. — Miranda July

There was no apology in her eyes, no love or caring. But she saw me, I existed, and this lifted the beams off my shoulders. It takes so little. — Miranda July

We grew still and stared at each other. It seemed incredibly dangerous to look into each other's eyes, but we were doing it. For how long can you behold another person? Before you have to think of yourself again, like dipping the brush back in for more ink. For a very long time, you didn't need to get more ink, there was no reason to get anything else, because she was as good as me, she lived on earth like me, she suffered as I did. — Miranda July

A teenage Filipino boy walked up to the car and just stood there, the way people do when disaster strikes. — Miranda July

She was standing on the moon and if I responded I would be on the moon too, right next to her. — Miranda July

So this was what it was like not to be me. — Miranda July

Teachers of subjects that this person wasn't even good at are kissing this person and renouncing the very subjects they taught. Math teachers are saying that math was just a funny way of saying I love you. — Miranda July

In the recurring dream everything has already fallen down, and I'm underneath. I'm crawling, sometimes for days, under the rubble. And as I crawl I realize that this one was the Big One. It was the earthquake that shook the whole world, and every single thing was destroyed. But this isn't the scary part. That part always comes right before I wake up. I am crawling and then suddenly I remember: the earthquake happened years ago. 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 something else. — Miranda July

But I knew jumping was like dying, I would have to let go of everything. — Miranda July

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

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

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

There were a series of closing kisses, goodbye kisses, kisses placed like lids on boxes - then the lid would pop off and need to be replaced. There, this is the final kiss - no, this is the final kiss. This one is, it really is. And now I'm just kissing that kiss good night. — Miranda July

Most of life is offline, and I think it always will be; eating and aching and sleeping and loving happen in the body. But it's not impossible to imagine losing my appetite for those things; they aren't always easy, and they take so much time. In twenty years I'd be interviewing air and water and heat just to remember they mattered. — Miranda July

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

My ideal life is just lounging around the house and every once in a while I'll kind of write something, and then I'll leave and eat something and masturbate or whatever - just this very fluid life of comforting myself. — Miranda July

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

I wondered how many other things had flown past me into death. Perhaps many. Perhaps I was flying past them, like the grim reaper, signaling the end. This would explain so much. — Miranda July

Maybe he wouldn't say anything, which is the worst thing men do. — Miranda July

The funny thing about my procrastination was that I was almost done with the screenplay. I was like a person who had fought dragons and lost limbs and crawled through swamps and now, finally, the castle was visible. I could see tiny children waving flags on the balcony; all I had to do was walk across a field to get to them. But all of a sudden I was very, very sleepy. And the children couldn't believe their eyes as I folded down to my knees and fell to the ground face-first, with my eyes open. Motionless, I watched ants hurry in and out of a hole and I knew that standing up again would be a thousand times harder than the dragon or the swamp and so I did not even try. I just clicked on one thing after another after another. — Miranda July

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

You always feel like you are the only one in the world, like everyone else is crazy for each other, but it's not true. Generally, people don't like each other very much. And that goes for friends, too. — Miranda July

The word God asks a question and then answers it before there is any chance to wonder. — Miranda July

But it had another layer to it, because imitating crass people was kind of liberating - like pretending to be a child or a crazy person. It was something you could do only with someone you really trusted, someone who knew how capable and good you actually were. — Miranda July

My eyes fell on the gray linoleum floor and I wondered how many other women had sat on this toilet and stared at this floor. Each of them the center of their own world, all of them yearning for someone to put their love into so they could see their love, see that they had it. — Miranda July

Tom looked across the patio, our eyes met, and for a split second I remembered my drunken nineteen-year-old face pressed against his chest at a party, his lips resting on the top of my head, murmuring, You know I wish I could. — Miranda July

An erratum is a correction inserted into a book after publication. It's a nice thing to collect because you can't go after them, you just come upon them. In 25 years I've only found about 12. — Miranda July

I mean obviously we're all dealing with a lot more strangers due to the web. I'd say it has more to do with the quality of interactions. When you're physically interacting with someone, it forces you to be more present and probably a little more uncomfortable. You have to tolerate being outside the comfort of your own home. — Miranda July

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

She was a very beautiful person who was missing something very ugly. Her winnings were the absence of something, and this quality hung around her. — Miranda July

Live the dream, Potato. — Miranda July

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

Narrative and characters have always interested me. I never tried to alienate an audience. Of course, gradually, I wanted a bigger and bigger space to draw people in, so it's very organic. — Miranda July

Just a sec. Just two months. Just a lifetime. Just a sec. — Miranda July

I could see it so clearly, the zygote- shiny and bulbous, filled with the electric memory of being two but now damned with the eternal loneliness of being just one. The sorrow that never goes away. — Miranda July

It was a tiny sound but it woke me up because it was a human sound. — Miranda July

The job of the artist is to point at things. — Miranda July

So the recordings were these immersive landscapes, and yet, unlike the performances that almost no one would see, I had a sense that these could live forever. I was just starting to get my head around the democratic aspect of art; I didn't want to make rarefied things that were either alienatingly obscure or elite and art-worldy, so a recording that anyone could buy was a great medium. — Miranda July

I do this before I bring someone new into my life; I try to get a sense of who I am so that I can make it easier for them to know me. — Miranda July

Let's say a person is down in the dumps, or maybe just lazy, and they stop doing the dishes. Soon the dishes are piled sky-high and it seems impossible to even clean a fork. So the person starts eating with dirty forks out of dirty dishes and this makes the person feel like a homeless person. So they stop bathing. Which makes it hard to leave the house. The person begins to throw trash anywhere and pee in cups because they're closer to the bed. We've all been this person, so there is no place for judgment, but the solution is simple:Fewer dishes. — Miranda July

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

Was she terrifyingly beautiful? Was she so ignorant she didn't deserve the truth? Was she also a liar and thus it was something they did together? I don't believe in psychology; which says everything you do is because of yourself. That is so untrue. We are social animals, and everything we do is because of other people, because we love them, or because we don't. — Miranda July

He's stuck at 3:14 a.m. with only the moon to talk to. — Miranda July

But we couldn't see to form a chain of doubt between each other's eyes. And her voice had a vibrant certainty that made believing her feel liberating and obvious. — Miranda July

Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed. — Miranda July

He seemed to be waiting for me to move forward. Weren't we all. — Miranda July

I actually don't have a great surplus of ideas. Some evolve very slowly, over many years, but I sort of trust that all of the interesting ones will become something that I eventually end up doing. — Miranda July

Well,I have a theory that men don't actually cry less than women,they just do it differently. Since we never saw our fathers cry,we are forced to invent our own unique method. — Miranda July

The usual treatment is psychotherapy." "I know." I didn't explain that I was single. Therapy is for couples. So is Christmas. So is camping. So is beach camping. — Miranda July

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

I supposed this was one reason why people got married, to make a fiction that was tellable. It wasn't just movies that couldn't contain the full cast of characters - it was us. We had to winnow life down so we knew where to put our tenderness and attention; and that was a good, sweet thing. But together or alone, we were still embedded in a kaleidoscope, ruthlessly varied and continuous, until the end of the end. — Miranda July

Two plus three is five, check the email, one plus seven is, check the email, eight, check the email, which comes to a total of, who the hell am I anyway, eighty five. This is how he dismembers his day, in the most painful way, moment by moment. A bigger man would just shoot it, put it out of its misery. — Miranda July

It was a new experience to walk across the city in tiny shorts and a half shirt ... I often felt that I would be shot in the back with an arrow or gun, but this didn't happen. The world wasn't safer than I had thought; on the contrary, it was so dangerous that my practically naked self fit right in, like a car crash, it happened every day. — Miranda July

There's all different kinds of people, but I don't think it's that unusual that once you get like a little power, you get to do your weird thing even more. — Miranda July

This person has hoped and dreamed and now it is really happening and this person can hardly believe it. But believing is not an issue here, the time for faith and fantasy is over, it is really really happening. It involves stepping forward and bowing. Possibly there is some kneeling, such as when one is knighted. One is almost never knighted. But this person may kneel and receive a tap on each shoulder with a sword. Or, more likely, this person will be in a car or a store or under a vinyl canopy when it happens. Or online or on the phone. It could be an e-mail re: your knighthood. Or a long, laughing, rambling phone message in which every person this person has ever known is talking on a speakerphone and they are all saying, You have passed the test, it was all just a test, we were only kidding, real life is so much better than that. — Miranda July