Quotes from Miranda July

Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

People tend to stick to their own size group because it's easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am willing to go the distance for you.

Don't wait to be sure. Move, move, move.

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.

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.

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.

It is terrible to have to ask for anything ever. We wish we were something that needed nothing, like paint. But even paint needs repainting.

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

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.

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

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

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).

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?

My husband and I are two people who never thought we'd be married.

I am a big fan of work in any medium that can take on death - being dead, being a soul - in a new way.