Top 70 Samantha Irby Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “Sadly, life is not a movie. Life is an impossibly long and unyielding march to the grave, peppered along the way with myriad disappointments and misfortunes.”

— Samantha Irby

2. “Convenience is the number one driver of everything I do.”

— Samantha Irby

3. “He’s not a bus – stop waiting for him. Catch the next one!”

— Samantha Irby

4. “I don’t know what an attractive personality is. I like charisma and charm, but what I really need to find is someone who doesn’t get on my nerves but is also minimally annoyed by all the irritating things about me.”

— Samantha Irby

5. “I approach most endeavors with zero expectations, which is a skill I have honed after forty years of fairly regular disappointment.”

— Samantha Irby

6. “Being perceived is excruciating, especially if you can’t go person to person explaining why you look like that. I’d go to a lot more stuff if I knew I could take each person aside and explain to them why I look and dress the way I do.”

— Samantha Irby

7. “This is just how I am. IM FINE. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had this undercurrent of sadness that, if I’m being honest, I don’t totally mind. It was easy to ignore because it doesn’t bother me that much. And I don’t want to be some shiny, happy idiot. This is gritty, this is real.”

— Samantha Irby

8. “Never again will I be with someone who is unwilling to accept me as I am, or who has any desire to mold me into something that makes me uncomfortable.”

— Samantha Irby

9. “You know what makes me happy? Unexpected phone calls in the middle of the day. Remembering what I liked at that one restaurant we went to that one time. Half-dead grocery store flowers just because they were on sale. A good morning text that says, “have a good day and try not to burn anything to the ground in a furious rage.”

— Samantha Irby

10. “I’m not bitter, I survived a liar. I’m not bitter, I weathered a cheater. I’m not bitter, I sustained a massive injury to the giant, bloody muscle in the center of my chest that is responsible for pumping blood through my entire body.”

— Samantha Irby

11. “I am a negative person by nature, and I typically shy away from anything that requires me to be having visible fun.”

— Samantha Irby

12. “Carnivore in the streets, person-who-has-eaten-a-carrot-masquerading-as-a-hot-dog in the sheets.”

— Samantha Irby

13. “Because I feel like if I’m still bothering to wash my hair and take a multivitamin once in a while and read an old issue of Newsweek at the doctor’s office then I haven’t let go, I’ve just loosened my grip.”

— Samantha Irby

14. “Leading people on is a hate crime. Especially when you could just say what you want and let them decide whether or not they want to give it to you without getting their romantic feelings involved.”

— Samantha Irby

15. “What have you not found but would like to have in a relationship? Someone who will leave me the hell alone for extended periods of time without getting all weird about it. I have a lot of audiobooks to listen to on the toilet.”

— Samantha Irby

16. “Hello, 911? I put on my jacket and got in my own car and braved the icy parking lot and picked up my own food: AM I SUPPOSED TO TIP?”

— Samantha Irby

17. “Oh brother, all these feelings. This is the part I’ve found I’m less good at, all the processing we have to do. All the thinking and the feeling and the talking that is required.”

— Samantha Irby

18. “It’s extremely hard to motivate myself to get to a place where I’m required to pay a twenty-dollar cover to get hip-checked by linebackers in church shoes all night, especially when I could just get back in my warm bed and NOT DO THAT.”

— Samantha Irby

19. “I learned how to operate under both the physical and emotional weight of unrelenting shame very early. Fat babies are adorable, while fat children are a little less so. Fat teenagers are chided into either end of the eating-disorder spectrum, and fat adults are either admonished for not figuring out how to get new bodies during adolescence or straight up dismissed altogether.”

— Samantha Irby

20. “You know, what I really need is someone who remembers to rotate this meaty pre-corpse toward the sun every couple of days and tries to get me to stop spending my money like a goddamn NBA lottery pick.”

— Samantha Irby

21. “These kids are going to find out real quick that my perceived intelligence is a web of lies built on a crumbling foundation of charm and quick wit.”

— Samantha Irby

22. “Showing up at a restaurant and hoping for the best is a young person’s game. If I’m going out, I need to know that there is a table with my name on it and a comfortable seat pulled up to it. I’m too old to hover anxiously near the door, sweating under my coat in my good outside clothes, watching people who actually planned ahead be ushered to their awaiting tables and served the foods I am dying to eat.”

— Samantha Irby

23. “Well, Sam, it’s obvious you’re the devil and that Jesus really was watching when you let that kid finger you in the laundry room of his apartment building freshman year. Give it up, dummy.” But then I realized that she was the wrong one, and now I’ve found the loophole through which I’m going to slip into heaven come Judgment Day. Like God is Judge Mathis.”

— Samantha Irby

24. “Having grown up in this liberal North Shore enclave where no one blinks an eye at your Liberal Gay Blackness, I sometimes forget that the minute you jump on 355 heading west, Illinois becomes an entirely different place. A place where mullets are still fashionable and fanny packs are considered an acceptable accessory.”

— Samantha Irby

25. “But no, I came by these feelings honestly. And I don’t accept bitter. Wounded, yes. Traumatized, sure. Grieving, okay. Anything other than bitter. I put too much work in to be callously tossed aside as bitter. Bitter is for someone who hasn’t earned it.”

— Samantha Irby

26. “The closer I creep toward the precipice of forty, the more time I spend listening to the same songs I listened to in high school and combing through surprisingly vivid memories of my time there, which is wild, because I did not actually have a good time being young!”

— Samantha Irby

27. “Let me save you from the heartbreak caused by the withering look on your nephew’s face when you attempt to make small talk about anything invented in the last ten years: don’t.”

— Samantha Irby

28. “I’m forty now, and the hilarious thing about being forty is this: I don’t know anything. Before you try to convince me otherwise or try to make me feel better, you should know that I know that YOU’RE forty and trying to reassure yourself that YOU know something. You don’t!”

— Samantha Irby

29. “Have you ever considered what a friendship is, or what any of your current friendships are, and thought about how to present that to a prospective new friend... How do you convince a stranger to give you their real e-mail when you are definitely going to litter their gmail dot come with dumb nonsense.”

— Samantha Irby

30. “Living in Chicago spoils you, because there are hundreds of places fifteen minutes from wherever you happen to be at any given moment where you can find locally sourced farm-to-table organic meals made by a chef who’s probably been on TV.”

— Samantha Irby

31. “I just don’t want to do that anymore. Can’t we just lie fully clothed in bed together while holding hands and talking about how good pork belly tacos taste? I don’t want to do the “I’m sorry this is my disgusting body” apology jig ever again, nor will there ever be a time that the “just let me keep my shirt on” waltz isn’t utterly humiliating. Why must they always argue? Just let me keep this stupid long-sleeved shirt on already.”

— Samantha Irby

32. “I really wish I was the type of person who owned a Prius and didn’t work fifty hours a week and could spend time in the grocery store reading labels to make sure that there isn’t a drop of gelatin or honey in every single thing I put in my cart at Whole Foods.”

— Samantha Irby

33. “Back when I had feelings, my self-esteem was a toilet. It caused me actual physical pain to know that someone didn’t like me. I mean, it still does, but I’m better insulated by drugs these days.”

— Samantha Irby

34. “Hello, 911? My friend just left me a voice mail.”

— Samantha Irby

35. “The Bachelorette proves that men are as petty and vapid and ridiculous as women are made to seem. They’re just better at hiding it, because they get to be Real Men and sulk and brood and bottle everything up.”

— Samantha Irby

36. “I’m not cheap, and I love flushing money down the toilet, but nothing brings the “child, that’s just overpriced Vaseline” out of me quicker than the skincare counter at Saks.”

— Samantha Irby

37. “So I did the next best thing: I unbuttoned my pants and decided to take a driving tour of the western suburbs. And that, my little pumpkins, is how a dude in a dress and a runaway slave happened upon Civil War Days.”

— Samantha Irby

38. “I live every single day in fear that a stranger might yell at me for some normal community thing I am doing wrong, like pulling up to the gas pump at a weird angle or exiting out of the wrong door. So, I cannot imagine being brave enough to take my time giving explicit instructions about my latte while people who are close enough to touch me get mad at me.”

— Samantha Irby

39. “Words like “outdoor music festival” are why I am so glad summer in Chicago lasts approximately seven minutes.”

— Samantha Irby

40. “Hello, 911? Why did this woman choose the middle stall in this three-stall public bathroom?”

— Samantha Irby

41. “Physical attraction? Not a real thing. If, at thirty-six years old, I’m sitting over here talking about chiseled abs and perfect teeth, then I am undeserving of genuine romantic love.”

— Samantha Irby

42. “When is the last time an actual human interaction made you laugh more than a meme did?”

— Samantha Irby

43. “HOSTILE is how I would describe my public personality; I am mild-mannered and super polite, but just beneath the surface of my skin, my blood is electrified and I am one inconsiderate driver away from a full Falling Down–style emotional collapse.”

— Samantha Irby

44. “Maybe in this life you get all kinds of soulmates, multiple people who vibrate at the same level you do.”

— Samantha Irby

45. “I feel my sexiness is a thing that creeps up on you, like mold on a loaf of corner-store bread you thought you’d get three more days out of.”

— Samantha Irby

46. “Itell anyone who is interested that my ideal long-term romantic relationship is one in which my manfriend and I have separate apartments in the same building. Or in buildings across the street from one another.”

— Samantha Irby

47. “And I cannot remember anything from a single history class I’ve ever taken, so unless tenth graders are being tested on BuzzFeed listicles and how to keep track of all the bogus e-mail addresses you’ve created to sign up for multiple thirty-day Tidal trials and ModCloth discount codes, I do not know anything of use to a modern-day child. I can show a kid how to make a satisfying meal out of stale saltines and leftover aloo gobi, but that is basically it.”

— Samantha Irby

48. “A handy trick is to think long and hard about what the person who hates you would realistically add to your life if they were to actually be a part of it. Most people really do have absolutely nothing to offer you.”

— Samantha Irby

49. “This is a luxury, you know, being spared the day-to-day deterioration of someone you love. I really wish I could’ve hugged that nurse.”

— Samantha Irby

50. “Like every other poor kid with sick or addicted parents, I knew that I needed to make myself small, that my problems should remain my problems only.”

— Samantha Irby