Quotes from Miranda July

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.

Then one night I woke at three A.M. certain he was rotting like a chicken carcass. Only as I lowered him into the sink did I realize this was a crazy time to wash a baby and I began to cry because he was so trusting—I could do anything and he would go along with it, the little fool.

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

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.

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.

A howl was curdling inside me; the ache felt inhuman. Or maybe this was my first human feeling.

Was everything redneck actually mystical?

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.

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.

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.

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.

You know what? Forget what I just said. You're already a part of this. 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.

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.

I would always be earthbound; he hadn't robbed me of my ability to fly or to live forever. I appreciated nuns now, not the conscripted kind, but modern women who chose it. 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?

Will you date me when I ask you out? it asked. Yes. Even if I'm ugly and you don't like my personality? Yes. No, you won't. I will! You're just saying that because you're in a hurry. Well, it won't be my fault if I miss the bus. Goodbye, sweetness. Bye! Where's my backpack? It's on the counter. Oh. Bye!

That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I'm being chased.

I checked to see if he and I had a special connection that was greater than his bond with his mother. We didn't.

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.

I hated my job, but I liked that I could do it

Sadness is pathetically limited to the range of thirst, it is just a sip of emotion, tightly buckled to a frown, quenchable.

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.

I wouldn't use a British accent out loud, but I'd be using one in my head and it would carry over.

We had fallen in love; that was still true. But given the right psychological conditions, a person could fall in love with anyone or anything. A wooden desk -- always on all fours, always prone, always there for you. What was the lifespan of these improbable loves? An hour. A week. A few months at best. The end was a natural thing, like the seasons, like getting older, fruit turning. That was the saddest part -- there was no one to blame and no way to reverse it.

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.