Quotes from Miranda July

The boy looks at his teacher. The sun is shining into his eyes and he squints, and there is a pause wherein the shining of the sun and the squinting of the boy are the only two movements on earth.

We learned to be discreet. It helped that nobody really cares about anyone but themselves anyway.

Because we are in the same business, he didn't have to explain that "typo" is short for "typographical error." If Helena had come out, we would have had to stop using our industry lingo so that she could understand us

and I guessed he was constructing the perfect question for me, a fantastic question that I would have to rise up to, drawing from everything I knew about myself and mythology and this black earth.

In my essence, I am a stone, unmoving for ten thousand years, unless picked up and moved.

She looked at me for a long time and then pulled an old envelope out of the trash and drew a pear on it. "This is how your body is shaped. See? Teeny tiny on top and not so tiny on the bottom." Then she explained the illusion created by wearing dark colors on the bottom and bright colors on top. When I see other women with this color combination I check to see if they're a pear too and they always are—two pears can't fool each other.

I was still happy to sit there beside him, but that is only because I have very, very low expectations of most people, and he had now become Most People.

That's the problem with men my age, I'm somehow older than them.

When I began to write, it was out of fear. I thought I might forget, or pretend to forget, or pretend to pretend, or grow up.

What most people would do in my situation is go to their boyfriend's house. They would go there and cry and be handed tissues and cry some more and never stop to think that they should really be laughing and smiling joyfully because their boyfriend is an actual physical being on the same plane of reality as them.

Food seemed impossibly strange. Children thought I was a child and tried to play with me, but I could neither play nor work, I could only wonder why. Why do people live at all.

What an amazing thing to be asked. Right now, tucked into the warmth of my car with this unanswerable question before me—this might have been my favorite moment of all the lifetimes.

But I couldn't put a face to the feeling; it was a dissolving thought, like a dream that hurries away when you approach it.

What about Helena? It's okay, because she's in the medical profession. They have to do whatever is the best for health. That's right, the Hippocratic oath. She'll be sad, but she won't interfere with us because of the oath. Will you move your things up to my apartment?

Romance. My utter lack of friends who shared my interests. Romance. The Soul. Romance. Life on other planets. Romance.

Just a sec. Just two months. Just a lifetime. Just a sec.

Not really, no. But me? Yes. Even though I have no pizzazz? What are you talking about, you perfect thing. You can see that I'm perfect?

Remember, you don't have to make the whole world romantic, or even the whole bedroom. Just the small space in front of your face. A very manageable territory, even the working women will agree.

Show us life, now

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. Always being the heaviest person in the house had been exhausting. I sipped my tea and leaned back into the couch. When he left I would have to shift the weight back onto my own shoulders again, but that was a problem for later.

C'était quelqu'un de complexe, avec de nombreuses strates d'émotions qui remontaient à la surface, certaines spirituelles, certaines torturées de manière plus séculière, et il brûlait d'amour pour moi.

And she felt a real sense of loss. Even though she knew she had never had an accent. It was the birthmark, which in its density had lent color even to her voice. She didn't miss the birthmark, but she missed her Norwegian heritage, like learning of new relatives, only to discover they have just died.

A neighbor with a green thumb and no yard. That's all. Would this be the first of many awakenings?

I walked to the car and wished that I could walk toward the car forever, with this confidence about where I was headed.