Top 140 Jennette McCurdy Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 3 of 3

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

— Jennette McCurdy

102. “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

103. “I usually realize that’s the first time I’ve felt my body since the exam started.”

— Jennette McCurdy

104. “Women with no children will never understand. No one but moms know the hardship of motherhood, and we non-moms must heap nothing but praise upon moms because we lowly, pitiful non-moms are mere peasants compared to the goddesses we call mothers.”

— Jennette McCurdy

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

— Jennette McCurdy

106. “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

107. “I know I’m not coming back.”

— Jennette McCurdy

108. “The soul-scraping introspection it takes to understand where bad habits and insecurities and self-sabotaging patterns come from and why, plus the motivation to challenge and change those bad habits and insecurities and self-sabotaging patterns even as they continue to get triggered over and over again by various life events.”

— Jennette McCurdy

109. “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

110. “This thing in Mom drives me nuts. This thing where she yearns to be pitied.”

— Jennette McCurdy

111. “Jennette, this is going to be one of the most important parts of recovery. Accepting slips and moving on from them.” I nod.”

— Jennette McCurdy

112. “I’m desperate to feel close with her, but also desperate for that closeness to be on my terms, not hers. 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

113. “Through the years, I’ve slowly learned that the entertainment business is one where what’s being said is rarely what’s being talked about.”

— Jennette McCurdy

114. “The disappointments in my life are piling up, and with each added disappointment, so grows my misery.”

— Jennette McCurdy

115. “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

116. “Maybe if somebody else did the damned dishes for once!” she shouts again, slamming down a mug. The handle breaks off it. She throws the mug pieces into a Ziploc bag, to preserve the memory.”

— Jennette McCurdy

117. “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.”

— Jennette McCurdy

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

— Jennette McCurdy

119. “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

120. “But that doesn’t directly impact your main environment – your home. Which is the main environment that influences your mental health. So why don’t we stay focused on the home?”

— Jennette McCurdy

121. “Bulimia helps me to rid myself of these emotions even if it is a temporary, unsustainable fix. Facing these emotions feels impossible. If I can’t even clearly identify them, how will I possibly be able to tolerate them?”

— Jennette McCurdy

122. “People with a propensity for eating disorders tend to be the types of people who get very caught up in their mistakes and struggle to move on from them. Perfectionists.”

— Jennette McCurdy

123. “I might be able to drive again someday,” she says timidly, like a child would to seek reassurance from an adult. “I know you might,” I say with loaded positivity, the way an adult would to reassure a child.”

— Jennette McCurdy

124. “There’s a moment of silence. It’s one of those rare moments where I feel like I didn’t say too much, or too little. I feel like I represented myself accurately and there’s nothing I would change about the way I said it. I feel proud.”

— Jennette McCurdy

125. “But then I realize I’m just romanticizing the dead in the same way I wish everyone else wouldn’t. Mom made it very clear she had no interest in changing. If she were still alive, she’d still be trying her best to manipulate me into being who she wants me to be.”

— Jennette McCurdy

126. “I believe her. I always believe her. My body language shifts immediately. Mom has a way of doing that to me. Just as she can set my body on edge and make me rigid with fear or anxiety, she can also calm me down. She has that kind of power. I wish she’d use it this way more often.”

— Jennette McCurdy

127. “No one else in the family seems to understand Mom’s emotions. Everyone else walks around clueless, never knowing which Mom they’re going to get. But I always know. I’ve spent my whole life studying her so that I can always know, because I always want to do whatever I can in any given moment to keep or make Mom happy.”

— Jennette McCurdy

128. “But what does mean something to me is the general air in the McCurdy household. The best way I can describe it is that, for as far back as I can remember, the air in the house has felt like a held breath. Like we’re all in a holding pattern, waiting for Mom’s cancer to come back. Between the constant reenactments of Mom’s first bout of cancer and the frequent follow-up visits with doctors, the unspoken mood in the house is heavy. The fragility of Mom’s life is the center of mine.”

— Jennette McCurdy

129. “I felt violated, yet I had no voice, no ability to express that. I was conditioned to believe any boundary I wanted was a betrayal of her, so I stayed silent. Cooperative.”

— Jennette McCurdy

130. “I was not equipped to handle the entertainment industry and all of its competitiveness, rejection, stakes, harsh realities, fame. I needed that time, those years, to develop as a child. To form my identity. To grow. I can never get those years back.”

— Jennette McCurdy

131. “Heavenly Father, please grant me patience. And be quick.”

— Jennette McCurdy

132. “His gestures are as exact as his phrasing – no uhhs or umms, in speech or in mannerisms. This is an umless man. I respect him. It takes a lot to be an umless man.”

— Jennette McCurdy

133. “The timing of food at restaurants is always impeccably in line with the phrase you’d least like someone to overhear. You almost have to appreciate it, it’s like the waiters work on this.”

— Jennette McCurdy

134. “My eyes are dead, my soul is nowhere to be found, but a smile is on my face and that’s all that counts.”

— Jennette McCurdy

135. “I’ve also never been too pretty for a role, ever. And now I am. I’m too pretty to play a ten-year-old androgynous hermaphrodite.”

— Jennette McCurdy

136. “I think of Mom. I don’t want to become her. I don’t want to live off Chewy granola bars and steamed vegetables. I don’t want to spend my life restricting and dog-earing Woman’s World fad diet pages. Mom didn’t get better. But I will.”

— Jennette McCurdy

137. “Without that aspect of fixing the other, we don’t have much to talk about. Like right now.”

— Jennette McCurdy

138. “Age is no excuse. I feel tremendous guilt ever time we rewatch the home video. How could I not have known better? What a stupid idiot. How could I have not sensed what Mom needed? That she needed all of us to be serious, to be taking the situation as hard as we possibly could, to be devastated. She needed us to be nothing without her.”

— Jennette McCurdy

139. “I would never admit this to Mom, I’ve only told her I’m devastated about being away from her, but I’m excited too. I feel guilty about that excitement, considering the fragility of her health, but the feeling is undeniable. I get to be on my own. I get space to myself. Life to myself.”

— Jennette McCurdy

140. “I feel furious with her, then immediately guilty for feeling furious. I must be a terrible person to be able to feel fury at my mother while she’s slowly dying.”

— Jennette McCurdy

141. “But what does mean something to me is the general air in the McCurdy household. The best way I can describe it is that, for as far back as.”

— Jennette McCurdy

142. “I throw on my best fake smile. Mom doesn’t notice the smile is fake.”

— Jennette McCurdy

143. “Suddenly I feel just like that little eleven-year-old girl who was confused and scared and uncertain. That eleven-year-old girl who was doubtful that I knew the whole truth of my situation, who was unsure that my mother was the hero she pretended to be, but who shoved that doubt down.”

— Jennette McCurdy

144. “There seems to be more hate than love for each other right now but maybe we’re just both scared. Maybe we’re just letting this wedge between us grow because deep down we both know that soon enough this wedge will be out of control.”

— Jennette McCurdy

145. “Maybe I wasn’t able to bring the tears for Without a Trace, but I was able to bring the smile for Mom on our drive home. Either way, it’s performing.”

— Jennette McCurdy

146. “I know,” I say to Miranda. “But there are things more important than money. And my mental health and happiness fall under that category.”

— Jennette McCurdy

147. “I used to think going inactive was a terrible thing, a sin to be ashamed of. But maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s a sign that things are going right. 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?”

— Jennette McCurdy