Top 120 Jennette McCurdy Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Writing is the opposite of performing to me. Performing feels inherently fake. Writing feels inherently real.”

— Jennette McCurdy

2. “To ensure that you do well at your Princess Paradise Park callback. If you do what I tell you to do, you will eventually book the role. When this happens, your mother will be happy and all of your family’s problems will be solved.”

— Jennette McCurdy

3. “I yearn to know the people I love deeply and intimately – without context, without boxes – and I yearn for them to know me that way, too.”

— Jennette McCurdy

4. “And if my entire life and point of view and identity have been built on a false foundation, confronting that false foundation would mean destroying and rebuilding a new foundation from the ground up. I have no idea how to go about doing this.”

— Jennette McCurdy

5. “He’s a distant man with an emotional range of a potato.”

— Jennette McCurdy

6. “Maybe when I have a slip, I can acknowledge how disappointing and frustrating it is without getting caught in the shame spiral. Without letting that spiral lead to more slips, and more slips, and more slips, until they’ve become a slide. Maybe now a slip can be, as Jeff says, just that. A slip.”

— Jennette McCurdy

7. “The air in the house felt like a held breath.”

— Jennette McCurdy

8. “He has no concept of loss. I feel like the world is divided into two types of people: people who know loss and people who don’t. And whenever I encounter someone who doesn’t, I disregard them.”

— Jennette McCurdy

9. “Trying to reason with the unreasonable is unreasonable.”

— Jennette McCurdy

10. “I have always felt reduced to the number on the scale – maybe because, in a way, it’s easier. Defining yourself is hard. Complicated. Messy. Letting the number on the scale do it for you is simple. Direct. Straightforward.”

— Jennette McCurdy

11. “The fragility of Mom’s life is the center of mine.”

— Jennette McCurdy

12. “Why haven’t I heard the Holy Ghost? I’d ask in my prayers. Is there something I’ve done wrong that has made me not deserve him? Is it my impure thoughts about Frankie Muniz?”

— Jennette McCurdy

13. “Church is a beautiful, peaceful, three-hour weekly reprieve from the place I hate most: home.”

— Jennette McCurdy

14. “I tried desperately to understand and know my mother – what made her sad, what made her happy, and on and on and on – at the expense of ever really knowing myself. Without Mom around, I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I need. I don’t know who I am. And I certainly don’t know what to wish for.”

— Jennette McCurdy

15. “Maybe it’s because she didn’t want to be a dancer growing up, she wanted to be an actress, and maybe Mom only sits in when I’m being the thing she wanted to be.”

— Jennette McCurdy

16. “She wanted this. And I wanted her to have it. I wanted her to be happy. But now that I have it, I realize that she’s happy and I’m not. Her happiness came at the cost of mine. I feel robbed and exploited.”

— Jennette McCurdy

17. “Mom didn’t get better. But I will.”

— Jennette McCurdy

18. “I was never aiming for bulimia. I was attempting to have anorexia, but I couldn’t keep it up without my mom.”

— Jennette McCurdy

19. “Joe turns on his side, facing away from me, and clutches a pillow tight to his chest. He takes a long breath. “What have I done?” he asks.”

— Jennette McCurdy

20. “I was conditioned to believe any boundary I wanted was a betrayal of her, so I stayed silent. Cooperative.”

— Jennette McCurdy

21. “I always forget that trying to reason with the unreasonable is... unreasonable.”

— Jennette McCurdy

22. “I feel like the world is divided into two types of people: people who know loss and people who don’t.”

— Jennette McCurdy

23. “Anorexia is regal, in control, all powerful. Bulimia is out of control, chaotic, pathetic, poor mans anorexia. I have friends with anorexia and I can tell they pity me.”

— Jennette McCurdy

24. “I hate being known as Sam. I absolutely hate it.”

— Jennette McCurdy

25. “Why do we romanticize the dead? Why can’t we be honest about them?”

— Jennette McCurdy

26. “Anyway, what was I saying?” he asks while he keeps massaging me. My shoulders do have a lot of knots in them, but I don’t want The Creator to be the one rubbing them out. I want to say something, to tell him to stop, but I’m so scared of offending him. “Oh, right,” he says, remembering his train of thought without my help. “Every kid out there would kill for an opportunity like the one you’ve got. You’re very lucky, Jennetter.”

— Jennette McCurdy

27. “I could buy some plants.” I shrug. The amount of times I’ve thought buying plants might make a difference in my life is staggering.”

— Jennette McCurdy

28. “Regardless, I’m discovering just how powerful of a tool it is to not love someone. Loving someone is vulnerable. It’s sensitive. It’s tender. And I get lost in them. If I love someone, I start to disappear.”

— Jennette McCurdy

29. “My scale has defined me for so long. The number it shows tells me whether I’m succeeding or failing, whether I’m trying hard enough or not, whether I’m good or bad.”

— Jennette McCurdy

30. “I proudly show my half-eaten portions to Mom after every meal. She beams. Each Sunday, she weighs me and measures my thighs with a measuring tape.”

— Jennette McCurdy

31. “This house is an embarrassment. This house is shameful. I hate this house. I hate how being inside it makes me feel tense and anxious.”

— Jennette McCurdy

32. “I’m so unimpressed by people. Even irritated by them. At times even disgusted by them.”

— Jennette McCurdy

33. “I’m abusing my body every day. I’m miserable. I’m depleted. And yet the compliments keep pouring in.”

— Jennette McCurdy

34. “Sorry,” I say while I poop and Mom wets a paper towel with water. I’m embarrassed she still insists on wiping my butt. I tried to tell her recently that now that I’m eight, I think I can handle it, but she looked like she was gonna cry and said she needs.”

— Jennette McCurdy

35. “I’ve become a bitter person and I’m resigned to that fact. I can’t change my circumstances, so why try to change who I’ve become as a result of them?”

— Jennette McCurdy

36. “Mom. And I can tell immediately by her body language and facial expression – upright posture, lifted chin, gritted teeth, widened eyes – that she’s not upset, she’s not angry, she’s livid. She’s about to blow. Oh no. There’s gotta be something I can do.”

— Jennette McCurdy

37. “It’s so annoying, eating-disorder brain. Anytime I’m having a conversation with someone over a meal, there’s another conversation happening internally – judgments and criticisms and self-loathing that press on me with such severity. They’re a brutal distraction. I can never be present with whoever I’m with. My focus is always more on the food than the person.”

— Jennette McCurdy

38. “I’m done being a good sport. I resent being a good sport. If I wasn’t such a good sport to begin with, I wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place.”

— Jennette McCurdy

39. “I can’t let Mom know I’m into purple, since Mom prefers pink. She would be heartbroken if I suddenly announce that I’ve switched my favorite color to one that isn’t also hers. It is an honor that Mom cares about me so much that something like me having my own favorite color would devastate her. True love.”

— Jennette McCurdy

40. “I’ve pretended for my job for so long, and for my mom for so long, and now I’m starting to think I’m pretending for myself too.”

— Jennette McCurdy

41. “I’m allowed to hate someone else’s dream, even if it’s my reality.”

— Jennette McCurdy

42. “That’s why I’ve learned with time that, as much as I want the compliments to mean something to me, I can’t let them, because tomorrow he might be screaming insults in my face that will hurt just as much as the compliments raise me up. I feel that I always need to be on guard around him. Catering to him emotionally. I feel similarly around The Creator as I feel around Mom–on edge, desperate to please, terrified of stepping out of line.”

— Jennette McCurdy

43. “She tells me to put the outfit on for my party while she already starts taking off my pajamas. As she’s removing my clothes, it feels more like a rip than a peel.”

— Jennette McCurdy

44. “The years that you’re supposed to spend finding yourself, I was spending pretending to be other people. The years that you’re supposed to spend building character, I was spending building characters.”

— Jennette McCurdy

45. “I’m realizing how much shame spirals have contributed to my issues. I’m so tired of swearing over and over again that “this time I’m done for real.” Maybe this acceptance of slips is the missing piece. Maybe when I have a slip, I can acknowledge how disappointing and frustrating it is without getting caught in the shame spiral. Without letting that spiral lead to more slips, and more slips, and more slips, until they’ve become a slide.”

— Jennette McCurdy

46. “Even if that thing makes you very uncomfortable at times. Even if that thing puts a lot of pressure on you. Even if that thing is very stressful. Sometimes it’s just nice to feel good at something.”

— Jennette McCurdy

47. “This house is an embarrassment. This house is shameful. I hate this house. I hate how being inside it makes me feel tense and anxious, and all week long I look forward to my three-hour escape into the land of testimonies and pine-scented tile cleaner.”

— Jennette McCurdy

48. “I don’t like knowing people in the context of things. Oh, that’s the person I work out with. That’s the person I’m in a book club with. That’s the person I did that show with. Because once the context ends, so does the friendship. I yearn to know the people I love deeply and intimately – without context, without boxes –.”

— Jennette McCurdy

49. “It’s my first time in a therapist’s waiting room and not at all what I expected. Aren’t these places supposed to be clinical? This room is anything but. It’s cozy and inviting. Granted, Laura is a therapist-slash-life coach, so maybe therapists that are multi-hyphenates do more decorating. I’m skeptical.”

— Jennette McCurdy

50. “I’m filled with so much shame and anxiety every time after I eat, I literally don’t know what to do to make myself feel better except throw up. And after I’m done, I half do. Half of me feels depleted, exhausted, like there’s nothing left, which is helpful. The other half of me now has a splitting headache, a sore throat, vomit sliding down my arm and tangled in my hair, and even more shame on top of the initial shame since now I’ve not only eaten but thrown up, too. Bulimia is not the answer.”

— Jennette McCurdy