Top 100 Miranda July Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. The longer I stood there, the longer I had to stand there. It was intricate and exponential. I looked like I was doing nothing, but really I was as busy as a physicist or a politician. I was strategizing my next move. That my next move was always not to move didn't make it any easier.
Miranda July
#4. A teenage Filipino boy walked up to the car and just stood there, the way people do when disaster strikes.
Miranda July
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. Everyone knows that if you paint a human being entirely with house paint he will live, as long as you don't paint the bottom of his feet. It takes only a little thing like this to kill a person.
Miranda July
#8. I suppose the daily disciplines are just a reflection of the qualities of my inner world - a mixture of paralysis and terror and a lighter, freer, kind of rebellious woman. So those are just constantly pushing against each other, and that's played out in every area of my life.
Miranda July
#9. 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
#10. I explained about how we were in Rick's hands and also how he had washed his hands.
Miranda July
#11. A more normal, mature way to think about it [my work] would be, Oh, I work on multiple projects at once and they overlap, but the actual psychology of it is a lot more self-abusing.
Miranda July
#12. Did you ever really love her?
Not really no.
But me?
Yes.
Even though I have no pizzazz?
Miranda July
#14. He seemed to be waiting for me to move forward. Weren't we all.
Miranda July
#15. In truth, I had not yet learned how to hate anyone but my parents. I was actually just standing there in love. I was not even really standing; if she had walked away suddenly, I would have fallen.
Miranda July
#16. I went to work the next day out of curiosity, as people return to their villages after the war to see what is left.
Miranda July
#17. I guess that's true, you really can't complain, can you?
Miranda July
#18. What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real.
Miranda July
#19. Now began the part of her life where she was just very beautiful, except for nothing. Only winners will know what this feels like. Have you ever wanted something very badly and then gotten it? Then you know that winning is many things, but it is never the thing you thought it would be.
Miranda July
#20. 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
#21. A howl was curdling inside me; the ache felt inhuman. Or maybe this was my first human feeling.
Miranda July
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. Where do we come from? Do souls really exist? I can't answer these questions, especially not at 6am.
Miranda July
#26. She looked utterly betrayed, as betrayed as the most betrayed person in Shakespeare.
Miranda July
#27. 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
#28. We really wanted to know all the unknowable things about each other and how we were the same and how we were different, if we even were, maybe nobody is.
Miranda July
#29. 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
#30. Things usually make sense in time, and even bad decisions have their own kind of correctness.
Miranda July
#31. I really did not feel okay about any of this, and there was really nothing I could do about any of it.
Miranda July
#33. It was a small thing, but it was a thing, and things have a way of either dying or growing, and it wasn't dying.
Miranda July
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. We had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.
Miranda July
#37. Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed.
Miranda July
#38. I felt like I could do this forever, because nothing mattered more than anything else.
Miranda July
#39. I was going to die and it was taking forever.
Miranda July
#40. She was standing on the moon and if I responded I would be on the moon too, right next to her.
Miranda July
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. He's stuck at 3:14 a.m. with only the moon to talk to.
Miranda July
#44. All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life - where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.
Miranda July
#45. I hated my job, but I liked that I could do it
Miranda July
#46. When I write, I wear earplugs. I don't want to be self-conscious. I don't want to be thinking about the fact that I'm thinking about it. I just want to be in it. It's one element of hypnosis.
Miranda July
#48. The boy was growing bored and this was a form of growing up.
Miranda July
#49. 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
#50. Would she understand that time had stopped while she was gone.
Miranda July
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. We come from long lines of people destined never to meet.
Miranda July
#54. Sadness is pathetically limited to the range of thirst, it is just a sip of emotion, tightly buckled to a frown, quenchable.
Miranda July
#55. Was I like honey thinking it's a small bear, not realizing the bear is just the shape of its bottle? -Cheryl
Miranda July
#56. 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
#57. I wouldn't use a British accent out loud, but I'd be using one in my head and it would carry over.
Miranda July
#58. 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
#59. Morning had gotten lost on the way home. We would lie this way forever, always saying goodbye, never parting.
Miranda July
#60. If I could quietly kill her without anyone knowing, I would.
Miranda July
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. People are always breaking through, like in the Doors song 'Break on Through (To the Other Side)'. But I really had. I had broken through twice now, and my feeling about the universe was that it was porous and radical and you could turn it on, you could even fuck around with the universe.
Miranda July
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. We held each other's hands and laughed with feigned embarrassment that gradually took hold and became real.
Miranda July
#68. I could not make a move without making love.
Miranda July
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. He called the feeling between us "weird," and I had nothing to add. I kissed the backs of his legs and they sang. He reached around and pulled me down onto his back and I lay there, like on the warm sand of a beach. Just that. That is all there is. That is the whole point of everything.
Miranda July
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. In my paranoid world every storekeeper thinks I'm stealing, every man thinks I'm a prostitute or a lesbian, every woman thinks I'm a lesbian or arrogant, and every child and animal sees the real me and it is evil.
Miranda July
#77. 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
#78. We don't really believe in mowing the lawn; we do it only to avoid unnecessary engagement with the neighbors.
Miranda July
#79. She bludgeoned me with a look of such limitless compassion that I immediately began to cry.
Miranda July
#80. The job of the artist is to point at things.
Miranda July
#81. The receptionist xeroxed my insurance card while explaining that chromotherapy isn't covered by insurance.
Miranda July
#82. 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
#83. When you can see the beauty of a tree, then you will know what love is.
Miranda July
#84. The word God asks a question and then answers it before there is any chance to wonder.
Miranda July
#85. It would require constant vigilance to not replace each person with my own fictional version of them.
Miranda July
#86. I felt like I wasn't living thoroughly enough - I was distracted in ways I wouldn't be if I'd been born in 1929.
Miranda July
#87. I wanted to be the kind of teacher who learned from her students.
Miranda July
#89. 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.
Miranda July
#90. 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
#91. But, like ivy, we grow where there is room for us.
Miranda July
#92. The thing I am most interested in is power relations - it is so easy to imagine that the other person is living a perfect life.
Miranda July
#93. I was actually writhing in heartache, as if I were a single muscle whose purpose was to mourn.
Miranda July
#94. 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
#95. 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
#96. and together we pushed through paragraphs, painstakingly sounding out the words, knitting them into human sentences that said very little.
Miranda July
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. I definitely wanted much more normalness than what was around me.
Miranda July
#100. I went to the bedroom and lay on the floor, so as not to mess up the covers.
Miranda July
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