Miranda July Quotes

Finally, in a low whisper, he said, ‘I think I might be a terrible person.’ For a split second I believed him - I thought he was about to confess a crime, maybe a murder. Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before asking someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.

We had loved people we really shouldn't have loved and then married other people in order to forget our impossible loves, or we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.

Your sentimentality softens all the edges, you’re misremembering. Take a moment to recall it as it really was: fucking hell.

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

Was I like honey thinking it’s a small bear, not realizing the bear is just the shape of its bottle?

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.

But maybe the road split between:

a life spent longing vs. a life that was continually surprising

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 pretended that I was pausing before telling him about the secret feeling of joy that I hide in my chest, waiting, waiting, waiting for someone to notice that I rise each morning seemingly with nothing to live for, but I do rise, and it is only because of this secret joy, God's love, in my chest. I looked down from the sky and into his eyes and I said, It wasn't your fault. I excused him for the cover and for everything else. For not yet being a New Man. We fell into silence then; he did not ask me any more questions. 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.

Remember the Simone de Beauvoir quote,” she said, “ ‘You can’t have everything you want but you can want everything you want.’

I don’t believe in psychology, which says everything you do is because of yourself. That is so untrue. We are social animals, and everything we do is because of other people, because we love them, or because we don’t.

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.

Without a child I could dance across the sexism of my era, whereas becoming a mother shoved my face right down into it.

It wasn't good, he wasn't good, he did not have good intentions. I stood there, and he stood there. He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done.

"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.