Top 100 Miranda July Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. I smiled into the air the way I smiled when customers unbuckled their belts, and I made my eyes laugh as if everything were some version of a good time.
Miranda July
#4. Oh, the future. I see." A shadow fell over the doctor's face. "You're wondering if your son will get cancer? Or be hit by a car? Or be bipolar? Or have autism? Or drug problems? I don't know, I'm not a psychic. Welcome to parenthood.
Miranda July
#5. 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
#6. We humans are here because nothing can be perfect. There always have to be some living things that are unsatisfied, itchy, trying too hard. If it was all just animals and rocks and lettuce, the gods wouldn't feel like they had enough to do.
Miranda July
#7. I always had to resist the urge to go to him like a wife, as if we'd already been a couple for a hundred thousand lifetimes.
Miranda July
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. I'm always the kind of friend or girlfriend who suggests, when there's some cataclysmic problem in the relationship, I'm like, "Well, maybe we can come up with a creative activity that will help us out." I'm like, "Let's get out the pens! Draw a picture of how much you hate me!"
Miranda July
#12. Morning had gotten lost on the way home. We would lie this way forever, always saying goodbye, never parting.
Miranda July
#13. 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
#14. I didn't have any vices before the Internet. There are a lot of cracks in the day, moments where you don't know what to do next, so you have a little hole where you look at your phone. You want something that will mean you're not alone in that moment.
Miranda July
#15. Was I like honey thinking it's a small bear, not realizing the bear is just the shape of its bottle? -Cheryl
Miranda July
#16. Sadness is pathetically limited to the range of thirst, it is just a sip of emotion, tightly buckled to a frown, quenchable.
Miranda July
#17. 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
#18. I guess like any writer or screenwriter I'm alone in my own world so much of the time that I'm often trying to force myself out of my world. Into more risk. A less controlled kind of inspiration. I'm so keenly aware of how easy it's getting to not leave the house, with Amazon, especially.
Miranda July
#19. I went to the bedroom and lay on the floor, so as not to mess up the covers.
Miranda July
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. and together we pushed through paragraphs, painstakingly sounding out the words, knitting them into human sentences that said very little.
Miranda July
#23. I'm totally not kidding ... Life is too short. This is all too hard to do to actually be kidding about the whole thing.
Miranda July
#24. I was actually writhing in heartache, as if I were a single muscle whose purpose was to mourn.
Miranda July
#25. But, like ivy, we grow where there is room for us.
Miranda July
#26. And it struck me that maybe True magazine had been wrong. Maybe there are no New Men. Maybe there are only the living and the dead, and all those who are living deserve each other and are equal to each other.
Miranda July
#28. I wanted to be the kind of teacher who learned from her students.
Miranda July
#29. When you can see the beauty of a tree, then you will know what love is.
Miranda July
#30. 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
#31. The receptionist xeroxed my insurance card while explaining that chromotherapy isn't covered by insurance.
Miranda July
#32. The job of the artist is to point at things.
Miranda July
#33. She bludgeoned me with a look of such limitless compassion that I immediately began to cry.
Miranda July
#34. We don't really believe in mowing the lawn; we do it only to avoid unnecessary engagement with the neighbors.
Miranda July
#35. Where do we come from? Do souls really exist? I can't answer these questions, especially not at 6am.
Miranda July
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real.
Miranda July
#40. Did you ever really love her?
Not really no.
But me?
Yes.
Even though I have no pizzazz?
Miranda July
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. I like embracing kind of normal forms but am always trying to approach them as if no one's ever done that before. As if I'm literally the first person to ever write a book.
Miranda July
#44. 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
#45. The boy was growing bored and this was a form of growing up.
Miranda July
#47. He's stuck at 3:14 a.m. with only the moon to talk to.
Miranda July
#48. Was all this real to her? Did she think it was temporary? Or maybe that was the point of love: not to think.
Miranda July
#49. 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
#50. She was standing on the moon and if I responded I would be on the moon too, right next to her.
Miranda July
#51. I felt like I could do this forever, because nothing mattered more than anything else.
Miranda July
#52. Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed.
Miranda July
#53. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. But I knew jumping was like dying, I would have to let go of everything.
Miranda July
#59. I kept getting older while he stayed young, my tiny husband.
Miranda July
#60. I'm interested in what the virtues of all those things are, especially for the kind of person who's made their own world that revolves around them, like writers do. It seems especially precious.
Miranda July
#61. I was patience defined, patience misspelled, patience sounded out slowly, letter by letter, with the t pronounced shh.
Miranda July
#62. It had not occurred to me that it would get this bad, that indignity would dance upon bloodshed.
Miranda July
#63. I had a joint once and I didn't feel right for a whole year.
Miranda July
#64. 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
#65. Each word he said was boring, but collectively the melody of them lulled me. I tried to resist, but just the weight of him, in pounds and ounces, was a relief.
Miranda July
#66. After a minute a willowy woman with a baby boy came out. The baby was swinging a crystal from a string. I checked to see if he and I had a special connection that was greater than his bond with his mother. We didn't.
Miranda July
#67. We could smell each other's shampoo and the laundry detergents we had chosen and I smelled that she didn't smoke but someone she loved did[...]
Miranda July
#68. 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
#69. I spend a lot of time obsessing about getting a dignified eight hours' sleep.
Miranda July
#70. I gave you things I wasn't sure I even had.
Miranda July
#71. 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
#72. He stood right in front of me and pinched my arm and said, Can I see your room?
Such relief. Even the pinch was good. I understood completely about needing to hurt someone at the same time that you are giving them something.
Miranda July
#73. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy to hope for something else.
Miranda July
#75. 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
#76. So this was what it was like not to be me.
Miranda July
#77. We still kissed frequently, usually a cluster of small pecks. An acronym for our early deep kisses. Which in a way was more intimate because only we knew what it stood for.
Miranda July
#78. I'm not saying I asked for it, only that there are moments when we are sending signals not just to the boys in the room but to all of creation.
Miranda July
#79. I was wondering if my life, the life in which I had a son and a beautiful, young girlfriend, could exist outside of the hospital. Or was the hospital its container? Was I like honey thinking it's a small bear, not realizing the bear is just the shape of its bottle?
Miranda July
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. It occurred to me that everyone's story matters to themselves, so the more I listened, the more she wanted to talk.
Miranda July
#83. 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
#84. Like a rich person, I live with a full-time servant who keeps everything in order - and because the servant is me, there's no invasion of privacy.
Miranda July
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. 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
#88. A real mother throws her heart over the fence and then climbs after it.
Miranda July
#89. I wondered if i would spend the rest of my life inventing complicated ways to depress myself..
Miranda July
#90. The singer was lifted up and illuminated with gratitude, not for any one thing, but for the whole of his life, even for the agony. Even in Latin you could tell he was thanking God for the agony in particular, for the way it allowed him to cleave so tightly to the world.
Miranda July
#91. She never inquired, but she never recoiled, either. This is a quality that I look for in a person, not recoiling.
Miranda July
#92. I moved his hair out of his face. I put my hand under his nose and felt gentle, even breaths. I pressed my lips against his ear and whispered again, It's not your fault. Perhaps this was really the only thing I had ever wanted to say to anyone, and be told.
Miranda July
#93. 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
#94. 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
#95. 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
#96. Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost.
Miranda July
#97. There had been options, before the baby, but none of them had been pursued ... I had been quiet when there was no reason to be quiet, consisten when consistency didn't matter. For the last twenty years I had lived as if I were taking care of a newborn baby.
Miranda July
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. After passionately nursing this idea for about an hour, I suddenly had another idea: no I wouldn't. Of course I wouldn't make an entire city out of cereal boxes in the basement. The moment I had this second thought, I knew this was the real one.
Miranda July
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