List of Miranda July Quotes

When You're Trying To Create Something And You Need To Hang Out, In Not Knowing, In All The Cracks And Spaces Where You Feel Lost, And You Need To Endure Them, And Have New Ideas Come Out Of That Emptiness, Well, The Internet Is What We Do When We Feel Lost, You Know? Like, You Go Online Or You Check Your Email When You Don't Know What To Do Next, And So It's Not Helpful, In That Sense.

I Can't Imagine Being Invested In Someone Else's Script.

The Whole Thing Of Working In All These Different Mediums, It's Just So That I Can Always Be Playing Hooky From One Of Them. I Can Always Be Rebelling Against My Boss. Like, I'm Supposed To Be Writing This Book, But - Heh Heh Heh - I'm Writing A Movie, Secretly. I'm Procrastinating, And In My Off-hours I'm Working On This Movie That I'm Not Allowed To Do, Because I'm Supposed To Be Writing A Book!

I'm Always Just Trying To Get The Work Done So That I Can Be Free - Like, With The Sense That, Like, The Real Me Has No Interest In This? I Just Gotta Do It For My Boss. But The Catch Is That I'm Never Free, I Never Finish The Work, So I Don't Know Who This Freewheeling Employee With Extracurricular Interests Is.

The Thing I Am Most Interested In Is Power Relations - It Is So Easy In A Relationship Like That [of An Artist And A Gallery Manager], To Imagine That The Other Person Is Living A Perfect Life.

Narrative And Characters Have Always Interested Me. I Never Tried To Alienate An Audience. Of Course, Gradually, I Wanted A Bigger And Bigger Space To Draw People In, So It's Very Organic [growth].

A More Normal, Mature Way To Think About It [my Work] Would Be, Oh, I Work On Multiple Projects At Once And They Overlap, But The Actual Psychology Of It Is A Lot More Self-abusing.

Somewhat Predictably, I'm Much More Comfortable In Front Of An Audience - And A Big Audience Is Even Better - Than Faced With One Stranger. This Always Seems Like A Bit Of A Failing On My Part, As A Human. I Think That's Also Why I Put Myself Situations Where I'm Forced To Engage In Other Ways.

I'm Interested In What The Virtues Of All Those Things Are, Especially For The Kind Of Person Who's Made Their Own World That Revolves Around Them, Like Writers Do. It Seems Especially Precious.

I Mean Obviously We're All Dealing With A Lot More Strangers Due To The Web. I'd Say It Has More To Do With The Quality Of Interactions. When You're Physically Interacting With Someone, It Forces You To Be More Present And Probably A Little More Uncomfortable. You Have To Tolerate Being Outside The Comfort Of Your Own Home.

When You're Not Doing Fiction, There's A Limit To How Much Illustrating You Can Do With Your Work. I Mean, You Can Do Fine. There Are Great Non-fiction Writers, But People Aren't Necessarily Going To Say Anything That Reveals Them As Much As A Picture Might. Even Their Surroundings, In Lot Of Cases, The Things That Meant The Most To Me Were The Things I Noticed In Their Houses. I Was Always Looking, As Much As I Was Listening To Them. I Was Looking Around For Clues As To Why I Was There.

To Get Anything Done, You Used To Have To Brush Past, Or At Least Lay Eyes On, Someone Whose Reality Was Totally Different From Your Own. That Used To Be Inevitable. If That Goes Away Because Everything's So Convenient, Everything's Brought To You, Well, Then There Goes One Of My Favorite Parts Of Life, And Something That I've Gone Out Of My Way To Court.

I Guess Like Any Writer Or Screenwriter I'm Alone In My Own World So Much Of The Time That I'm Often Trying To Force Myself Out Of My World. Into More Risk. A Less Controlled Kind Of Inspiration. I'm So Keenly Aware Of How Easy It's Getting To Not Leave The House, With Amazon, Especially.

So The Recordings Were These Immersive Landscapes, And Yet, Unlike The Performances That Almost No One Would See, I Had A Sense That These Could Live Forever. I Was Just Starting To Get My Head Around The Democratic Aspect Of Art; I Didn't Want To Make Rarefied Things That Were Either Alienatingly Obscure Or Elite And Art-worldy, So A Recording That Anyone Could Buy Was A Great Medium.

The Level Of Control, That's Part Of What's So Appealing About Filmmaking - You Have So Much Control Over What The Reader, The Viewer, Is Noticing From Moment To Moment. They Can't Do That Boring Boring Boring Thing As Easily.

I Like Embracing Kind Of Normal Forms But Am Always Trying To Approach Them As If No One's Ever Done That Before. As If I'm Literally The First Person To Ever Write A Book.

I Suppose The Daily Disciplines Are Just A Reflection Of The Qualities Of My Inner World - A Mixture Of Paralysis And Terror And A Lighter, Freer, Kind Of Rebellious Woman. So Those Are Just Constantly Pushing Against Each Other, And That's Played Out In Every Area Of My Life.

I Wrestle My Fears With Every Big Decision I Make. Ultimately, Maybe All That Wrestling Does Is Make You Sick Of Your Own Thoughts, And So With Nothing Resolved You Just Go Ahead And Have Unprotected Sex. The Moment I Became Pregnant, Everything Became Out Of Gait. None Of Those Fears Seem Relevant In The Same Way, And That's So Like Life, That Once You Do The Daring Move You're In A Totally Different Landscape. Now It's A New Story.

I'm Always The Kind Of Friend Or Girlfriend Who Suggests, When There's Some Cataclysmic Problem In The Relationship, I'm Like, "well, Maybe We Can Come Up With A Creative Activity That Will Help Us Out." I'm Like, "let's Get Out The Pens! Draw A Picture Of How Much You Hate Me!"

My Ideal Life Is Just Lounging Around The House And Every Once In A While I'll Kind Of Write Something, And Then I'll Leave And Eat Something And Masturbate Or Whatever - Just This Very Fluid Life Of Comforting Myself.

There's Always The Sense That You Should Strike While The Iron's Hot And While There Are All These Opportunities, But That's Not The Way I Get Ideas. It Has To Be More Organic, Building Up Through Living And Through Experiencing Things.

I Think Because I Write So Many Short Stories, It's Not That Hard To Come Up With Characters That Are Not Me.

The Life You Live In Front Of An Audience Is Like An Altered State - It's Not Totally Real. I'm Always, Even In The Course Of One Day, Trying To Find Ways To Balance Both Sides.

As A Woman Filmmaker It's Pretty Important That You Have Some Basis Of Confidence That You're Coming From, Because, As I Got Closer To La, There's Less And Less Women. There's Less And Less Mirrors For Who You Are.