Top 120 Jennette McCurdy Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “I want to give you the life I never had, Net. I want to give you the life I deserved. The life my parents wouldn’t let me have.”

— Jennette McCurdy

52. “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

53. “He kept brushing his hair behind his ear, which is mildly repulsive to see coming from a man.”

— Jennette McCurdy

54. “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

55. “I’m pretty sure the God I’ve learned about doesn’t make exceptions.”

— Jennette McCurdy

56. “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

57. “At the beginning of the decade, the people I was close to seemed like friends for life, people I could never imagine not seeing every day. But life happens. Love happens. Loss happens. Change and growth happen at different paces for different people, and sometimes the paces just don’t line up. It’s devastating if I think too much about it, so I usually don’t.”

— Jennette McCurdy

58. “I peel – don’t rip – off the paper, because I know Mom likes to save a wrapping paper scrap from every present, and if I rip instead of peel, the paper won’t be as intact as she’d like it to be.”

— Jennette McCurdy

59. “My anxiety causes me to be a people pleaser. My anxiety causes me to take the picture and sign my autograph and say it’s a good one. But underneath that anxiety is a deep, unearthed combination of feelings that I fear to face. I fear that I’m bitter. I’m too young to be bitter. Especially as a result of a life that people supposedly envy. And I fear that I resent my mother. The person I have lived for. My idol. My role model. My one true love.”

— Jennette McCurdy

60. “Maybe people go to church because they want things from God. And they keep going while they’re wishing and yearning and longing for those things. But then maybe once they get those things, they realize they don’t need church anymore. Who needs God when you’ve got clear mammograms and a series regular role on Nickelodeon? I.”

— Jennette McCurdy

61. “My mother emotionally, physically and mentally abused me in ways that will forever impact me. She gave me breast and vaginal exams until I was seventeen years old. These “exams” made my body stiff with discomfort. I felt violated, yet I had no voice, no ability to express that.”

— Jennette McCurdy

62. “But not your daughter. She’s got a great sad face,” he laughs. “She does. She does have a great sad face,” Mom says, nodding and beaming and seeming to forget that a half hour ago that sad face was the very thing she was trying to get rid of.”

— Jennette McCurdy

63. “I’m too drunk to be able to fully make out the blur of figures standing in front of me singing in a range of keys. Why is “Happy Birthday” the hardest song ON EARTH to sing, when it’s also the most popular song on earth? What kind of sick joke is this?”

— Jennette McCurdy

64. “She needed us to be nothing without her.”

— Jennette McCurdy

65. “Mom says Hollywood’s like a bad boyfriend. “They keep stringing you along without making any type of formal commitment.” I’m not exactly sure what this means, but it sounds right.”

— Jennette McCurdy

66. “The more experience I’ve got, the more I recognize that the body is hardly a reliable reflection of what’s going on inside it. My body has fluctuated frequently and drastically throughout this decade, and no matter how it’s fluctuated, no matter whether my body is a kids’ size 10 slim or an adult size 6, I’ve had an issue underneath it.”

— Jennette McCurdy

67. “Mom would always tell me I looked so pretty, even though every time she told me I looked pretty I shrieked as loud as I could that I wasn’t pretty, I was “hampsome.” I was too little to be able to say “handsome” properly, but old enough to know that I wanted to be called what my brothers were called, not some stupid, lesser term designated for the girls.”

— Jennette McCurdy

68. “Loving someone is vulnerable. It’s sensitive. It’s tender. And I get lost in them. If I love someone, I start to disappear. It’s so much easier to just do googly eyes and fond memories and inside jokes for a few months, run the second things start to get real, then repeat the cycle with someone new.”

— Jennette McCurdy

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

— Jennette McCurdy

70. “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

71. “Calorie restriction is wonderful!”

— Jennette McCurdy

72. “I’m realizing for the first time how exhausting it is to constantly curate my natural tendencies, responses, thoughts, and actions into whatever version Mom would like most. Without her around, I don’t have to. I miss her deeply, and my heart aches over what she’s going through, and I certainly feel a lot of guilt about the ease I feel these days, but that ease is undeniable.”

— Jennette McCurdy

73. “Fun isn’t a thing I’m particularly familiar with. Life’s a serious thing. There’s a lot going on in this place. Being prepared and working hard and doing well are far more important than fun.”

— Jennette McCurdy

74. “We talked about how sad and miserable we are and how we feel guilty about it because we have so much to be grateful for. We watched “Dance Moms” until we fell asleep. Between Abby Lee Miller’s abusive tactics and the intensity of the parents, we relate deeply.”

— Jennette McCurdy

75. “Not my best friend though,” Mom continues. “You’re my best friend, Net. You’re Mommy’s best friend.” I beam. I’m so happy to be her best friend. To be the closest person in the world to her. This is my purpose. I feel whole.”

— Jennette McCurdy

76. “What I want and what I need deserves to be listened to.”

— Jennette McCurdy

77. “This is not my first-ever solo apartment. This is our apartment. We are roommates.”

— Jennette McCurdy

78. “It’s easier to be angry than to feel the pain underneath it.”

— Jennette McCurdy

79. “Through writing, I feel power for maybe the first time in my life. I don’t have to say somebody else’s words. I can write my own. I can be myself for once. I like the privacy of it. Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s judging. Nobody’s weighing in. No casting directors or agents or managers or directors or Mom. Just me and the page. Writing is the opposite of performing to me. Performing feels inherently fake. Writing feels inherently real.”

— Jennette McCurdy

80. “They’re clearly all in this together, and not in a fun High School Musical clap-it-high kind of way.”

— Jennette McCurdy

81. “Men, they’ll will hurt you without ever really knowing you. But women... women will know you deeply, intimately, and then hurt you. You tell me which is worse.”

— Jennette McCurdy

82. “The second the child star tries to outgrow and break free from their image, they become bait for the media, highly publicized as rebellious, troubled, and tortured, when all they’re trying to do is grow. Growing is wobbly and full of mistakes, especially as a teenager – mistakes that you certainly don’t want to make in the public eye, let alone be known for for the rest of your life. But that’s what happens when you’re a child star. Child stardom is a trap. A dead end.”

— Jennette McCurdy

83. “Through writing, I feel power for maybe the first time in my life. I don’t have to say somebody else’s words. I can write my own. I can be myself for once. I like the privacy of it. Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s judging. Nobody’s weighing in.”

— Jennette McCurdy

84. “Regardless, I’m discovering just how powerful of a tool it is to not love someone.”

— Jennette McCurdy

85. “How could I possibly be so upbeat when my surroundings were so obviously heavy? I was two. Age is no excuse. I feel tremendous guilt every time we rewatch the home video. How could I not have known.”

— Jennette McCurdy

86. “We lean in. Our lips touch. Lips feel nasty. They’re like little gross fleshy piles of flesh. It’s disgusting to be a person.”

— Jennette McCurdy

87. “So one of our ultimate goals here in therapy is to reduce judgement around food. All judgement. We want you to neutralize food. It’s just a thing you eat, neither good nor bad. Regardless of whether it’s pineapple or pancakes.”

— Jennette McCurdy

88. “I’m way more nervous than I’ve ever been to go on a first date. Maybe because the stakes are higher. This isn’t just any first date. This is my first date with my biological dad.”

— Jennette McCurdy

89. “I want her to know me for who I’m becoming. I want her to allow my growth. I want her to want me to be me.”

— Jennette McCurdy

90. “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 it and rebuilding a new foundation from the ground up. I have no idea how to go about doing this. I have no idea how to go about life without doing it in the shadow of my mother, without my every move being dictated by her wants, her needs, her approval.”

— Jennette McCurdy

91. “I wish that Mom will stay alive another year.”

— Jennette McCurdy

92. “I’ve been slacking and the slacking needs to stop. I need to get back to anorexia. I need to be a kid again.”

— Jennette McCurdy

93. “Sometimes it’s just nice to feel good at something.”

— Jennette McCurdy

94. “I know I’m not coming back.”

— Jennette McCurdy

95. “My life purpose has always been to make Mom happy, to be who she wants me to be. So without Mom, who am I supposed to be now?”

— Jennette McCurdy

96. “I don’t want to tear him down while he’s so lit up, so I throw on my best gentle tone and remind him of our early dating conversations, where he seemed to agree with me that religion is a thing that stunts growth, not a thing that promotes it.”

— Jennette McCurdy

97. “Her death left me with more questions than answers, more pain than healing, and many layers of grief – the initial grief from her passing, then the grief of accepting her abuse and exploitation of me, and finally, the grief that surfaces now when I miss her and start to cry – because I do still miss her and start to cry.”

— Jennette McCurdy

98. “It feels like desperation. I want order. I want peace. I want my three-hour reprieve from this place.”

— Jennette McCurdy

99. “When everything’s in my head, it feels chaotic and jumbled. But when I can look down at a sheet of paper and see myself reflected back in words and tallies and graphs, it’s clarifying.”

— Jennette McCurdy

100. “Granted, freeways are involved. I’d have to learn how to drive freeways. But it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for you, Net. ‘Cuz I’m not like my parents. I want what’s best for you. Always. You know that, right?”

— Jennette McCurdy