Miranda July Quotes (70 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Miranda July: 70 quotes1 like

Famous Miranda July Quotes

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

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“Sometimes I looked at her sleeping face, the living flesh of it, and was overwhelmed by how precarious it was to love a living thing. She could die simply from lack of water. It hardly seemed safer than falling in love with a plant.”

Miranda July

Source: The First Bad Man

“Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you.”

Miranda July

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

Miranda July

Source: It Chooses You

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Miranda July Quotes about life

“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?”

Miranda July

Source: The First Bad Man

“All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life - where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.”

Miranda July

Variant: All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life—where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.
Source: It Chooses You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“For a split second I felt as though she was nobody special in the larger scheme of my life. She was just some girl who had tied me to her leg to help her sink when she jumped off the bridge. Then I blinked and was in love with her again.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Miranda July Quotes about love

“Then I realized 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.”

Miranda July

Source: The First Bad Man

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: It Chooses You

“I could not make a move without making love.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“I looked out the window for other passengers in love with their drivers, but we were well disguised, we pretended boredom and prayed for traffic.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“They wordlessly excused each other for not loving each other as much as they had planned.”

Miranda July

"Birthmark" in Paris Review (Spring 2003)
Context: They wordlessly excused each other for not loving each other as much as they had planned. There were empty rooms in the house where they had meant to put their love and they worked together to fill these rooms with high-end, consumer-grade equipment. It was a tight situation. The next sudden move would have to be through the wall.

Miranda July: Trending quotes

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“I have to do something, I have to make something or talk to someone — things are not the same anymore”

Miranda July

Pretty Cool People interview (2007)
Context: I guess my favorite thing in the world is when I look at a piece of art, or read a story, or watch a movie where I walk away feeling like "Oh my god — I have to do something, I have to make something or talk to someone — things are not the same anymore" — and so I try to make work where you come away with that feeling. It's like, yeah, you're thinking about what you just saw, but even more than that — you feel able, you feel like, kind of propelled.

“Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you.”

Miranda July

The Shared Patio (2005)
Context: Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.

Miranda July Quotes

“Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself.”

Miranda July

The Shared Patio (2005)
Context: Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself. It is actually really hard to write something that will make a terminally ill person feel better. And Positive has rules, you can't just lift your guidance from the Bible or a book about Zen; they want original material. So far none of my submissions have gotten in, but I'm getting closer.

“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?”

Miranda July

Pretty Cool People interview (2007)

“I think there’s something spiritual in a very day-to-day, mundane existence.”

Miranda July

As quoted in "Miranda July Is Totally Not Kidding" by Katrina Onstad, in The New York Times (14 July 2011) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/magazine/the-make-believer.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all <br class="br">Context: I think there’s something spiritual in a very day-to-day, mundane existence. It’s impossible to articulate, and it’s happening now, almost like a perverse secret.... That’s always sort of fascinating to me.

“Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.”

Miranda July

“Now began the part of her life where she was just very beautiful. Except for nothing.”

Miranda July

"Birthmark" in Paris Review (Spring 2003) http://guccipiggy.objectis.net/prose/birthmark <br class="br">Context: 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.

“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.”

Miranda July

The Shared Patio (2005)
Context: 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.

“Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“Live the dream, Potato.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“Would she understand that time had stopped while she was gone.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“I went to the bedroom and lay on the floor, so as not to mess up the covers.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“I steeled myself against laughter; I would rather die than laugh. I didn’t laugh, I did not laugh. But I died, I did die.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“We were always getting away with something, which implied that someone was always watching us, which mean were are not alone in this world.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“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.”

Miranda July

Source: It Chooses You

“And why had Deb's last boyfriend dumped her?
I dumped him.
Maybe you didn't French-kiss him enough.
I promise you that wasn't it.
Tell me how many times a day you kissed, and I'll say if it was enough.
Four hundred.
Not enough.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“I was going to die and it was taking forever.”

Miranda July

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

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

Miranda July

Source: It Chooses You

“In my paranoid world every storekeeper thinks I’m stealing, every man thinks I’m a prostitute or a lesbian, every woman thinks I’m a lesbian or arrogant, and every child and animal sees the real me and it is evil.”

Miranda July

Source: It Chooses You

“I wanted to make the movie feel like life feels to me — and life feels both sad and dark and confusing and more than hopeful — it feels like something totally incredible could happen at any moment and with no explanation.”

Miranda July

On her film Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), in an interview at Apple.com http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/in-action/?movie=july

“It was a tiny sound but it woke me up because it was a human sound.”

Miranda July

"The Man on the Stairs" in Fence (Spring/Summer 2004) http://fence.fenceportal.org/v7n1/text/july.html

“I pressed my lips against his ear and whispered, again, It's not your fault. Perhaps this was really the only thing I had ever wanted to say to anyone, and be told. I imagined couples at the altar, standing before the priest, declaring It's not your fault to each other, before kissing in the union.”

Miranda July

The Shared Patio (2005)

“That is my problem with life, I just 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 like I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest.”

Miranda July

"The Man on the Stairs" in Fence (Spring/Summer 2004)

“What I like best is the kind of complicated messed up truth, you know … the one that's so imperfect that you know it's true.”

Miranda July

Pretty Cool People interview (2007)

“No one's keeping track — no one's making of an archive of these "unimportant" things, you know… but now we have an archive … and in a way, the second there's many, it becomes proof of something, something that's so unspecific — that it's — that it's lively — to me that's really alive — that kind of half nauseous, half beautiful feeling.”

Miranda July

Pretty Cool People interview (2007)

“I’m totally not kidding. … Life is too short. This is all too hard to do to actually be kidding about the whole thing.”

Miranda July

As quoted in "Miranda July Is Totally Not Kidding" by Katrina Onstad, in The New York Times (14 July 2011)

“I think there’s something spiritual in a very day-to-day, mundane existence. It’s impossible to articulate, and it’s happening now, almost like a perverse secret.... That’s always sort of fascinating to me.”

Miranda July

As quoted in "Miranda July Is Totally Not Kidding" by Katrina Onstad, in The New York Times (14 July 2011) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/magazine/the-make-believer.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all