Miranda July Quotes

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

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.

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

What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real.

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.

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

We come from long lines of people destined never to meet.

... we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.

Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed.

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

Live the dream, Potato.

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?

I really did not feel okay about any of this, and there was really nothing I could do about any of it.

I definitely wanted much more normalness than what was around me.

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.

I eat an egg every morning, and when I'm done, I almost always have the thought: There. Now even if I'm captured and starved, I'll be able to live off the protein of that egg for a while.

It would require constant vigilance to not replace each person with my own fictional version of them.

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.

That's the artist's job, really: continually setting yourself free, and giving yourself new options and new ways of thinking about things.

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.

If you want to have a character who falls into crisis, all you have to do is turn the Internet off, and then we all understand how that feels, when you suddenly just have time and yourself.

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

I realize 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.

There was nothing in this world that was not a con, suddenly I understood this. Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost.

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.

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 gave you things I wasn't sure I even had.

Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy to hope for something else.

I could not make a move without making love.

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.

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.

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.

To do someone else's script? I don't think I'd have a reason.

She bludgeoned me with a look of such limitless compassion that I immediately began to cry.

It occurred to me that everyone’s story matters to themselves, so the more I listened, the more she wanted to talk.

He's stuck at 3:14 a.m. with only the moon to talk to.

Did you ever really love her? Not really no. But me? Yes. Even though I have no pizzazz?

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.

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.

We don't really believe in mowing the lawn; we do it only to avoid unnecessary engagement with the neighbors.

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

The word God asks a question and then answers it before there is any chance to wonder.

I nodded, pretending I was relaxed. I watched the sunlight sparkling on the water and practiced mind-body integration for a few seconds by quietly hyperventilating.

When you can see the beauty of a tree, then you will know what love is.

She never inquired, but she never recoiled, either. This is a quality that I look for in a person, not recoiling.

My way into making movies - into making things is general - has been through performing.

I can't imagine being invested in someone else's script.

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.

The thing I am most interested in is power relations - it is so easy in a relationship like that [of an artist and a gallery manager], to imagine that the other person is living a perfect life.

Narrative and characters have always interested me. I never tried to alienate an audience. Of course, gradually, I wanted a bigger and bigger space to draw people in, so it's very organic [growth].