Top 180 Miranda July Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “When I said “a lot of work,” I moved my hands apart to represent all the work. He stared at the space between my palms and asked if I played the accordion. I could feel the accordion between my hands and how impressed he would be if I said yes.”

— Miranda July

152. “I was an angel looking down into the world, into one car on the world, into two members of mankind, into their souls, and into the place behind their souls: the void.”

— Miranda July

153. “There were a series of closing kisses, goodbye kisses, kisses placed like lids on boxes – then the lid would pop off and need to be replaced. There, this is the final kiss – no, this is the final kiss. This one is, it really is. And now I’m just kissing that kiss good night.”

— Miranda July

154. “I was patience defined, patience misspelled, patience sounded out slowly, letter by letter, with the t pronounced “shh.”

— Miranda July

155. “You know what? Forget what I just said. You’re already a part of this. You will eat, you will laugh at stupid things, you will stay up all night just to see what it feels like, you will fall painfully in love, you will have babies of your own, you will doubt and regret and yearn and keep a secret. You will get old and decrepit, and you will die, exhausted from all that living. That is when you get to die. Not now.”

— Miranda July

156. “Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the earth again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet day after day, alone.”

— Miranda July

157. “Their prayer was rage.”

— Miranda July

158. “It must happen all the time, a fleeting passion overwhelms someone’s true course and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

— Miranda July

159. “But we couldn’t see to form a chain of doubt between each other’s eyes. And her voice had a vibrant certainty that made believing her feel liberating and obvious.”

— Miranda July

160. “After a minute a willowy woman with a baby boy came out. The baby was swinging a crystal from a string. I checked to see if he and I had a special connection that was greater than his bond with his mother. We didn’t.”

— Miranda July

161. “But it had another layer to it, because imitating crass people was kind of liberating – like pretending to be a child or a crazy person. It was something you could do only with someone you really trusted, someone who knew how capable and good you actually were.”

— Miranda July

162. “Each day I wondered what would happen next. What happens when you stop wanting, when you are happy.”

— Miranda July

163. “Maybe he wouldn’t say anything, which is the worst thing men do.”

— Miranda July

164. “She was standing on the moon and if I responded I would be on the moon too, right next to her.”

— Miranda July

165. “The singer was lifted up and illuminated with gratitude, not for any one thing, but for the whole of his life, even for the agony. Even in Latin you could tell he was thanking God for the agony in particular, for the way it allowed him to cleave so tightly to the world.”

— Miranda July

166. “So this was what it was like not to be me.”

— Miranda July

167. “He drank the cotton-candy milk from the day at the pier. The last batch was from the morning she left and this milk was full of plans I didn’t know about. When he finished that bottle she was really gone, every last drop of her.”

— Miranda July

168. “I went home early to study my apartment before the class. I wanted to look at everything through her eyes. I do this before I bring someone new into my life; I try to get a sense of who I am so that I can make it easier for them to know me.”

— Miranda July

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

— Miranda July

170. “I checked to see if he and I had a special connection that was greater than his bond with his mother. We didn’t.”

— Miranda July

171. “A howl was curdling inside me; the ache felt inhuman. Or maybe this was my first human feeling.”

— Miranda July

172. “I do this before I bring someone new into my life; I try to get a sense of who I am so that I can make it easier for them to know me.”

— Miranda July

173. “Where did they go, those things we did?”

— Miranda July

174. “She was a very beautiful person who was missing something very ugly. Her winnings were the absence of something, and this quality hung around her.”

— Miranda July

175. “Tom looked across the patio, our eyes met, and for a split second I remembered my drunken nineteen-year-old face pressed against his chest at a party, his lips resting on the top of my head, murmuring, You know I wish I could.”

— Miranda July

176. “Was all this real to her? Did she think it was temporary? Or maybe that was the point of love: not to think.”

— Miranda July

177. “I had written the same word seven thousand times attempting to alchemize time.”

— Miranda July

178. “We held each other’s hands and laughed with feigned embarrassment that gradually took hold and became real.”

— Miranda July

179. “Ce n’est pas de votre faute.”

— Miranda July

180. “I feel into the eyes of every person I passed on the street.”

— Miranda July

181. “And as I crawl, I realize that this one was the Big One. It was the earthquake that shook the whole world, and every single thing was destroyed. But this isn’t the scary part. That part always comes right before I wake up. I am crawling, and then suddenly, I remember: the earthquake happened years ago. 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 to hope for something else.”

— Miranda July

182. “That’s the problem with men my age, I’m somehow older than them.”

— Miranda July