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If You Are Sad, Ask Yourself Why You Are Sad. Then Pick Up The Phone And Call Someone And Tell Him The Answer To The Question. If You Don't Know Anyone, Call The Operator And Tell Him. Most People Don't Know That The Operator Has To Listen, It Is A Law. Also, The Postman Is Not Allowed To Go Inside Your House, But You Can Talk To Him On Public Property For Up To Four Minutes Or Until He Wants To Go, Whichever Comes First.

-Miranda July

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If You Are Sad,

Miranda July

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If You Are Sad, Ask Yourself Why You Are Sad. Then Pick Up The Phone And Call Someone And Tell Him The Answer To The Question. If You Don't Know Anyone, Call The Operator And Tell Him. Most People Don't Know That The Operator Has To Listen, It Is A Law. Also, The Postman Is Not Allowed To Go Inside Your House, But You Can Talk To Him On Public Property For Up To Four Minutes Or Until He Wants To Go, Whichever Comes First.

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I Laughed And Said, Life Is Easy. What I Meant Was, Life Is Easy With You Here, And When You Leave, It Will Be Hard Again.

Thus Far, Everything I've Made Has Come Out Of My Really Feeling It, Out Of The Fire Of My Life.

Some People Need A Red Carpet Rolled Out In Front Of Them In Order To Walk Forward Into Friendship. They Can't See The Tiny Outstretched Hands All Around Them, Everywhere, Like Leaves On Trees.

Sometimes I Would Make Left Turns All The Way Around A Block, And When I Returned To The Original Intersection, I Would Feel Disappointed To Find All The Drivers Were New. It Wasn't Like A Square Dance, Where You Miraculously End Up With Your Original Partner, Laughing And Feeling Giddily Relieved To Find Him After Dancing With Everyone Else In The World. Instead, They Swung Around And Kept On Going, Some People Were At Work By Now, Or Halfway To The Airport. In Fact, Driving Might Be The Thing Most Opposite Of Dancing.

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.

This Person Realizes That Staying Home Means Blowing Off Everyone This Person Has Ever Known. But The Desire To Stay In Is Very Strong. This Person Wants To Run A Bath And Then Read In Bed.

Nothing Really Mattered, And Nothing Could Be Lost.

I Cried In English, I Cried In French, I Cried In All The Languages, Because Tears Are The Same All Around The World.

… It Wasn’t Pretend, I Wasn’t In A Fairytale Or A Fable. I Shut My Eyes And Absorbed The Silent Whoomp That Always Accompanies This Revelation. It’s The Sound Of The Real World, Gigantic And Impossible, Replacing The Smaller Version Of Reality That I Wear Like A Bonnet, Clutched Tightly Under My Chin.

I Definitely Wanted Much More Normalness Than What Was Around Me.

Maybe That's Why People Take Pictures Of Themselves, To Avoid Being Described.

He Seemed To Be Waiting For Me To Move Forward. Weren't We All.

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].

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

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.

And Why Had Deb's Last Boyfriend Dumped Her? I Dumped Him. Maybe You Didn't French-kiss Him Enough. I Promise You That Wasn't It. Tell Me How Many Times A Day You Kissed, And I'll Say If It Was Enough. Four Hundred. Not Enough.

I Can Guarantee You Nothing I Do Is A Conscious Attempt To Inject Something In.

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.

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.

I Was A Lot Dumber When I Was Writing The Novel. I Felt Like Worse Of A Writer Because I Wrote Many Of The Short Stories In One Sitting Or Over Maybe Three Days, And They Didn't Change That Much. There Weren't Many, Many Drafts. That Made Me Feel Semi-brilliant And Part Of A Magical Process. Writing The Novel Wasn't Like That. I Would Come Home Every Day From My Office And Say, "well, I Still Really Like The Story, I Just Wish It Was Better Written." At That Point, I Didn't Realize I Was Writing A First Draft. And The First Draft Was The Hardest Part.

I Didn't Have Any Vices Before The Internet. There Are A Lot Of Cracks In The Day, Moments Where You Don't Know What To Do Next, So You Have A Little Hole Where You Look At Your Phone. You Want Something That Will Mean You're Not Alone In That Moment.

He Breathed Out The Bitter Air That Makes Women Doubt Everything, And I Breathed It In, As I Had Always Done. I Expelled My Dust, The Powder Of Everything I Had Destroyed With Doubt, And He Pulled It Into His Lungs.

The Job Of The Artist Is To Point At Things.

I Supposed This Was One Reason Why People Got Married, To Make A Fiction That Was Tellable. It Wasn’t Just Movies That Couldn’t Contain The Full Cast Of Characters — It Was Us. We Had To Winnow Life Down So We Knew Where To Put Our Tenderness And Attention; And That Was A Good, Sweet Thing. But Together Or Alone, We Were Still Embedded In A Kaleidoscope, Ruthlessly Varied And Continuous, Until The End Of The End.

I Really Did Not Feel Okay About Any Of This, And There Was Really Nothing I Could Do About Any Of It.

We Had Loved People We Really Shouldn't Have Loved And Then Married Other People In Order To Forget Our Impossible Loves, Or We Had Once Called Out Hello Into The Cauldron Of The World And Then Run Away Before Anyone Could Respond.

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.

I Actually Don't Have A Great Surplus Of Ideas. Some Evolve Very Slowly, Over Many Years, But I Sort Of Trust That All Of The Interesting Ones Will Become Something That I Eventually End Up Doing.

She Never Inquired, But She Never Recoiled, Either. This Is A Quality That I Look For In A Person, Not Recoiling.

To Do Someone Else's Script? I Don't Think I'd Have A Reason.

In My Paranoid World Every Storekeeper Thinks I’m Stealing, Every Man Thinks I’m A Prostitute Or A Lesbian, Every Woman Thinks I’m A Lesbian Or Arrogant, And Every Child And Animal Sees The Real Me And It Is Evil.

But, Like Ivy, We Grow Where There Is Room For Us.

Was She Terrifyingly Beautiful? Was She So Ignorant She Didn't Deserve The Truth? Was She Also A Liar And Thus It Was Something They Did Together? I Don't Believe In Psychology; Which Says Everything You Do Is Because Of Yourself. That Is So Untrue. We Are Social Animals, And Everything We Do Is Because Of Other People, Because We Love Them, Or Because We Don't.

Things Usually Make Sense In Time, And Even Bad Decisions Have Their Own Kind Of Correctness.

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 Looked At Other Couples And Wondered How They Could Be So Calm About It. They Held Hands As If They Weren't Even Holding Hands. When Steve And I Held Hands, I Had To Keep Looking Down To Marvel At It. There Was My Hand, The Same Hand I've Always Had - Oh, But Look! What Is It Holding? It's Holding Steve's Hand! Who Is Steve? My Three-dimensional Boyfriend. Each Day I Wondered What Would Happen Next. What Happens When You Stop Wanting, When You Are Happy. I Supposed I Would Go On Being Happy Forever. I Knew I Would Not Mess Things Up By Growing Bored. I Had Done That Once Before.

Don't Wait To Be Sure. Move, Move, Move.

For A Split Second I Felt As Though She Was Nobody Special In The Larger Scheme Of My Life. She Was Just Some Girl Who Had Tied Me To Her Leg To Help Her Sink When She Jumped Off The Bridge. Then I Blinked And Was In Love With Her Again.

Since I Started Making Art, I've Always Had Some Kind Of Project That Was Really About And For Other People, Because I Think I Just Need That Balance To Feel Sane Myself — You Know?

Where Do We Come From? Do Souls Really Exist? I Can't Answer These Questions, Especially Not At 6am.

I Wish There Were A Class Where We Could Just Keep Going Around The Circle. Around And Around, Until We Had Finally Said Everything About Ourselves.

If You Read My Short Stories, There's A Lot Of Sex In Those In All Different Ways. To Me, It's A Really Good, Useful Thing To Get To Have In A Story. And In A Movie, It's Amazing, Because You Actually Get To Show Things.

All I Ever Really Want To Know Is How Other People Are Making It Through Life—where Do They Put Their Body, Hour By Hour, And How Do They Cope Inside Of It.

Some May Say That Such A Girl Is Not Ready For A Relationship With A Man, Especially A Man In His Late Sixties. But To That I Say: We Don't Know Anything. We Don't Know How To Cure A Cold Or What Dogs Are Thinking. We Do Terrible Things, We Make Wars, We Kill People Out Of Greed. So Who Are We To Say How To Love. I Wouldn't Force Her. I Wouldn't Have To. She Would Want Me. We Would Be In Love. What Do You Know. You Don't Know Anything. Call Me When You've Cured Aids, Give Me A Ring Then And I'll Listen.

I've Always Been Terrified Of Getting Used To Something That Is Actually Killing Me-a Relationship Or A Job. But In Those Cases, You Can Count On A Friend To Say Something. The Internet Is Different, Because All My Friends Are In The Same Relationship.

I Walked Down The Hall And Saw That [she] Was Sitting On The Floor Next To A Chair. This Is Always A Bad Sign. It's A Slippery Slope, And It's Best Just To Sit In Chairs, To Eat When Hungry, To Sleep And Rise And Work. But We Have All Been There. Chairs Are For People, And You're Not Sure If You Are One.

He Was Worried She Would Not Let Him Love Her With The Stain. He Had Already Decided Long Ago, Twenty Or Thirty Minutes Ago, That The Stain Was Fine. He Had Only Seen It For A Moment, But He Was Already Used To It. It Was Good. It Somehow Allowed Them To Have More.

I Nodded, Pretending I Was Relaxed. I Watched The Sunlight Sparkling On The Water And Practiced Mind-body Integration For A Few Seconds By Quietly Hyperventilating.

That's The Artist's Job, Really: Continually Setting Yourself Free, And Giving Yourself New Options And New Ways Of Thinking About Things.

It Occurred To Me That Everyone’s Story Matters To Themselves, So The More I Listened, The More She Wanted To Talk.

Life Is Just This Way, Broken, And I Am Crazy To Hope For Something Else.

It Is Terrible To Have To Ask For Anything Ever. We Wish We Were Something That Needed Nothing, Like Paint. But Even Paint Needs Repainting.

I Don't Tally The World, Asking, "would This Annoy You? Would This Annoy You?" That's So Far Removed From Where I'm At When I'm In The Trenches Struggling With How To Express Things That I Don't Fully Understand Myself.

We Were Always Getting Away With Something, Which Implied That Someone Was Always Watching Us, Which Meant That We Were Not Alone In This World.

Well,i Have A Theory That Men Don't Actually Cry Less Than Women,they Just Do It Differently. Since We Never Saw Our Fathers Cry,we Are Forced To Invent Our Own Unique Method.

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.

It Was A Real Whale, A Photograph Of A Real Whale. I Looked Into Its Tiny Wise Eye And Wondered Where That Eye Was Now. Was It Alive And Swimming, Or Had It Died Long Ago, Or Was It Dying Now, Right This Second? When A Whale Dies, It Falls Down Through The Ocean Slowly, Over The Course Of A Day. All The Other Fish See It Fall, Like A Giant Statue, Like A Building, But Slowly, Slowly.

We Really Wanted To Know All The Unknowable Things About Each Other And How We Were The Same And How We Were Different, If We Even Were, Maybe Nobody Is.

Collections Are Certainly Abundant Online. It's Complicated, Because It's Not Like These People Didn't Want Computers, Although There Was Some Nonchalance About It. I Would Sometimes Ask The People I Interviewed If They Wished They Had A Computer, And In A Lot Of Cases, It Was Like They Couldn't Process The Question. You Don't Know What You Don't Have, I Guess.

Writing A Novel Was Like I Had Some Play-doh To Work With And Could Just Keep Working With It - Doing A Million Drafts And Things Changing Radically And Characters Appearing And Disappearing And Solving Mysteries: Why Is This Thing Here? Should I Just Take That Away? And Then Realizing, No, That Is There, In Fact, Because That Is The Key To This. I Love That Sort Of Detective Work, Keeping The Faith Alive Until All The Questions Have Been Sleuthed Out.

Some People Are Uncomfortable With Silences. Not Me. I’ve Never Cared Much For Call And Response. Sometimes I Will Think Of Something To Say And Then I Ask Myself: Is It Worth It? And It Just Isn’t.

Live The Dream, Potato.

Living The Dream

In An Ideal World, We Would Have Been Orphans. We Felt Like Orphans And We Felt Deserving Of The Pity That Orphans Get, But Embarrassingly Enough, We Had Parents.

It Was An Act Of Devotion. A Little Like Writing Or Loving Someone — It Doesn’t Always Feel Worthwhile, But Not Giving Up Somehow Creates Unexpected Meaning Over Time.

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 For Dreaming Of Something Else.

You Always Feel Like You Are The Only One In The World, Like Everyone Else Is Crazy For Each Other, But It's Not True. Generally, People Don't Like Each Other Very Much. And That Goes For Friends, Too.

If You Want To Have A Character Who Falls Into Crisis, All You Have To Do Is Turn The Internet Off, And Then We All Understand How That Feels, When You Suddenly Just Have Time And Yourself.

I Am Very Sincere. Some People Are Always Kidding, So When You're Not, It's Going To Seem Annoying To Them.

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.

The Idea That You Might End Up In A Job That Doesn't Allow You To Be Who You Are, Over The Course Of A Lifetime, Is Still One Of The Most Chilling Nightmares To Me. It's A Good Metaphor For Fears I Have About Losing My Soul In Some Accidental, Mundane Way. So, To Me, These Jobs That My Characters Have Are Very Loaded. They Immediately Suggest A Complex Character To Me, A Woman Who Is, Say, A Secretary, But Also A Vigilante On Behalf Of Her Own Soul.

That Day I Carried The Dream Around Like A Full Glass Of Water, Moving Gracefully So I Would Not Lose Any Of It.

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!

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.

We Come From Long Lines Of People Destined Never To Meet.

La Isn’t A Walking City, Or A Subway City, So If Someone Isn’t In My House Or My Car We’ll Never Be Together, Not Even For A Moment. And Just To Be Absolutely Sure Of That, When I Leave My Car My Iphone Escorts Me, Letting Everyone Else In The Post Office Know That I’m Not Really With Them, I’m With My Own People, Who Are So Hilarious That I Can’t Help Smiling To Myself As I Text Them Back.

I Had A Joint Once And I Didn't Feel Right For A Whole Year

I Gave You Things I Wasn't Sure I Even Had.

I Spend A Lot Of Time Obsessing About Getting A Dignified Eight Hours' Sleep.

I Wondered If I Would Spend The Rest Of My Life Inventing Complicated Ways To Depress Myself.

I Think Titles Are Tricky Because They're Like A Really Short Ad For The Book. And Like An Ad, They Should Open The Door In A Way That Might Be More Accessible Than The Book Itself. So I Always Like Titles To Be Familiar. I'm Not Trying To Break Ground With The Title Itself. The Title Should Feel Like Something Already Celebrated.

It Would Require Constant Vigilance To Not Replace Each Person With My Own Fictional Version Of Them.

An Erratum Is A Correction Inserted Into A Book After Publication. It's A Nice Thing To Collect Because You Can't Go After Them, You Just Come Upon Them. In 25 Years I've Only Found About 12.

You've Got The People You Know, Which Are Problematic. Always. They're Rich But They're Also Real People Living Their Lives Alongside You. Then You've Got The People That You Make-up Completely, Who Are Often Missing A Dimension If They Don't Have Some Reference To Real People. So Strangers Exist In This In-between Space, Where In Not Knowing Them, You Are Creating A Fiction For Them, Even In Passing, But At The Same Time, There They Are, With Their Actual Bodies And Their Actual Clothes. It's Totally Enticing.

Sometimes I Lie In Bed Trying To Decide Which Of My Friends I Truly Care About, And I Always Come To The Same Conclusion: None Of Them. I Thought These Were Just My Starter Friends And The Real Ones Would Come Along Later. But No. These Are My Real Friends.

Look At The Sky: That Is For You. Look At Each Person's Face As You Pass Them On The Street: Those Faces Are For You. And The Street Itself, And The Ground Under The Street, And The Ball Of Fire Underneath The Ground: All These Things Are For You.

It Was A Tiny Sound But It Woke Me Up Because It Was A Human Sound.

People Who Would Not Be Using The Word Gender Or Thinking About Gayness Or Trans-ness May Actually, Without Even Thinking About It, Be Not Their Own Gender In Their Inner World. I Think That's Actually So Normal, Because Female Sexuality Is Sold To All Of Us. It Doesn't Just Reach The Eyes Of Men. You Might Not Care About The Idea Of Boobs Or Jugs Or Whatever, But It Could Impact Your Inner Sexual Life.

The Word God Asks A Question And Then Answers It Before There Is Any Chance To Wonder.

When You Can See The Beauty Of A Tree, Then You Will Know What Love Is.

People Tend To Hold On To Their First Impressions - That's Why Those First Descriptions Can Be So Important. You Don't Even Necessarily Look At People That Carefully After A While; You Just Hold On To That Early Impression.

First Impression

Most Great Filmmakers Are Good At Place. Like How People Say, Like, "the City Itself Is A Character In The Movie," You Know? I'm So Interior. I Always Forget There's Such A Thing As An Exterior Wide Shot, Where You Can See Where Someone Is. As Opposed To Just: How Can We Show What This Person Is Thinking, In An Abstract Way That Is Felt?

My Job Is To Have New Ideas And Take Risks Every Day, So I'm Always Looking Forward To The Next Thing Being Done Or Making The Next Thing That I Haven't Yet Gotten To. That's Sort Of The Constant In My Life.

What A Terrible Mistake To Let Go Of Something Wonderful For Something Real.

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.

Very Few Women Have Become Famous For Being Who They Actually Are, Nuanced And Imperfect. When Honesty Happens, It's Usually Couched In Self-ridicule Or Self-help. Dunham Doesn't Apologize Like That-she Simply Tells Her Story As If It Might Be Interesting. The Result Is Shocking And Radical Because It Is Utterly Familiar. Not That Kind Of Girl Is Hilarious, Artful, And Staggeringly Intimate; I Read It Shivering With Recognition.

I'm Not A Cinephile. My Films Don't Reference Films. I'm More Interested In Rhythm And Feeling.

It Was A Small Thing, But It Was A Thing, And Things Have A Way Of Either Dying Or Growing, And It Wasn’t Dying.

Would She Understand That Time Had Stopped While She Was Gone.

My Earliest Memory Is Aged Three, Seeing Sunlight On Water And Feeling It Was Really Magical.

Do You Have Doubts About Life? Are You Unsure If It's Worth The Trouble? Look At The Sky: That Is For You. Look At Each Person's Face As You Pass On The Street: Those Faces Are For You. And The Street Itself, And The Ground Under The Street And The Ball Of Fire Underneath The Ground: All These Things Are For You. They Are As Much For You As They Are For Other People. Remember This When You Wake Up In The Morning And Think You Have Nothing. Stand Up And Face The East. Now Praise The Sky And Praise The Light Within Each Person Under The Sky. It's Okay To Be Unsure. But Praise, Praise, Praise.

Most Of Life Is Offline, And I Think It Always Will Be; Eating And Aching And Sleeping And Loving Happen In The Body. But It's Not Impossible To Imagine Losing My Appetite For Those Things; They Aren't Always Easy, And They Take So Much Time. In Twenty Years I'd Be Interviewing Air And Water And Heat Just To Remember They Mattered.

I'm Totally Not Kidding. Life Is Too Short. This Is All Too Hard To Do To Actually Be Kidding About The Whole Thing.

Life Is Too Short

He's Stuck At 3:14 A.m. With Only The Moon To Talk To.

Did You Ever Really Love Her? Not Really No. But Me? Yes. Even Though I Have No Pizzazz?

I Looked Out The Window For Other Passengers In Love With Their Drivers, But We Were Well Disguised, We Pretended Boredom And Prayed For Traffic.

I Asked Myself If I Would Kill My Parents To Save His Life, A Question I Had Been Posing Since I Was Fifteen. The Answer Always Used To Be Yes. But In Time, All Those Boys Had Faded Away, And My Parents Were Still There. I Was Now Less And Less Willing To Kill Them For Anyone; In Fact, I Worried For Their Health. In This Case, However, I Had To Say Yes. Yes, I Would.

I Was Going To Die And It Was Taking Forever.

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.

If There Were A Map Of The Solar System, But Instead Of Stars It Showed People And Their Degrees Of Separation, My Star Would Be The One You Had To Travel The Most Light-years From To Get To His. You Would Die Getting To Him.

The Things Keeping You Back-these Embarrassing, Boring, Stupid Obstacles-are The Heart Of What It Is To Be Human. They’re The Whole Reason For Making And Needing Art. So You Might As Well Go Ahead And Begin In Whatever Way You Can Right Now.

We Don't Really Believe In Mowing The Lawn; We Do It Only To Avoid Unnecessary Engagement With The Neighbors.

After I Had My Son I Looked Everywhere For A Book That Might Serve As Some Kind Of Mirror. I Bought So Many Silly Books. Now I See What The Problem Was: I Wanted A Book About Time-about Mortality. I Can't Think Of A Writer Who Is At Once So Experimentally Daring And So Rigorously Uncompromising As Sarah Manguso. Ongoingness Is An Incredibly Elegant, Wise Book, And I Loved It.

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.

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.

We Humans Are Here Because Nothing Can Be Perfect. There Always Have To Be Some Living Things That Are Unsatisfied, Itchy, Trying Too Hard. If It Was All Just Animals And Rocks And Lettuce, The Gods Wouldn't Feel Like They Had Enough To Do.

I Think There's Something Spiritual In A Very Day-to-day, Mundane Existence. It's Impossible To Articulate, And It's Happening Now, Almost Like A Perverse Secret. . . . That's Always Sort Of Fascinating To Me.

When I Was Very Little, I Probably Wanted To Be More Normal. I Probably Wanted The Laura Ashley Bedroom, And Instead I Got Thrift-store Everything.

They Wordlessly Excused Each Other For Not Loving Each Other As Much As They Had Planned To. There Were Empty Rooms In The House Where They Had Meant To Put Their Love, And They Worked Together To Fill These Rooms With Midcentury Modern Furniture. ("birthmark").

I Don't Think I'm More Of A Screenwriter Than I Am A Fiction Writer. I'm More Of A Reader Than A Film-watcher, So I Imagine That I'm Not Approaching Fiction Or Films In A Particularly Cinematic Way.

When She Saw My Messy Desk, She Said She Was The Same Way, And There Was No Dust On The Tv, And I Was Easy To Love. People Just Need A Little Help Because They Are So Used To Not Loving. It's Like Scoring The Clay To Make Another Piece Of Clay Stick To It.

She Bludgeoned Me With A Look Of Such Limitless Compassion That I Immediately Began To Cry.

I Eat An Egg Every Morning, And When I'm Done, I Almost Always Have The Thought: There. Now Even If I'm Captured And Starved, I'll Be Able To Live Off The Protein Of That Egg For A While.

I Made Some Shorts That I'm Not In. I Think Because I Write So Many Short Stories, It's Not That Hard To Come Up With Characters That Are Not Me. But My Way Into Making Movies Has Been Through Performing. My Very First Short Film, I Played A Child And Her Own Mother. So In Some Ways, To Me, My Great Achievement So Far Is Just That I've Gotten All These Other People To Play The Other Parts. That's What Makes It A Real Movie.

He Pulled Away, But His Eyes Held My Eyes Like Hands.

I Steeled Myself Against Laughter; I Would Rather Die Than Laugh. I Didn’t Laugh, I Did Not Laugh. But I Died, I Did Die.

I Moved His Hair Out Of His Face. I Put My Hand Under His Nose And Felt Gentle, Even Breaths. I Pressed My Lips Against His Ear And Whispered Again, It’s Not Your Fault. Perhaps This Was Really The Only Thing I Had Ever Wanted To Say To Anyone, And Be Told.

I Think It's More Interesting If You Go All The Way With The World You Have, And Really Look At It, And Push It To An Even More Extreme Extreme.

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.

... We Had Once Called Out Hello Into The Cauldron Of The World And Then Run Away Before Anyone Could Respond.

There's All Different Kinds Of People, But I Don't Think It's That Unusual That Once You Get Like A Little Power, You Get To Do Your Weird Thing Even More.

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.

Inelegantly, And Without My Consent, Time Passed.

If You Were Wise Enough To Know That This Life Would Consist Mostly Of Letting Go Of Things You Wanted, Then Why Not Get Good At The Letting Go, Rather Than The Trying To Have?

Making A Movie: It's So Hard. It's The Hardest Of All The Things I Do.

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 Realize That We All Think We Might Be Terrible People. But We Only Reveal This Before We Ask Someone To Love Us. It Is A Kind Of Undressing.

There Was Nothing In This World That Was Not A Con, Suddenly I Understood This. Nothing Really Mattered, And Nothing Could Be Lost.

When I Write, I Wear Earplugs. I Don't Want To Be Self-conscious. I Don't Want To Be Thinking About The Fact That I'm Thinking About It. I Just Want To Be In It. It's One Element Of Hypnosis.

Now Began The Part Of Her Life Where She Was Just Very Beautiful, Except For Nothing. Only Winners Will Know What This Feels Like. Have You Ever Wanted Something Very Badly And Then Gotten It? Then You Know That Winning Is Many Things, But It Is Never The Thing You Thought It Would Be.

If You Are Sad, Ask Yourself Why You Are Sad. Then Pick Up The Phone And Call Someone And Tell Him The Answer To The Question. If You Don't Know Anyone, Call The Operator And Tell Him. Most People Don't Know That The Operator Has To Listen, It Is A Law. Also, The Postman Is Not Allowed To Go Inside Your House, But You Can Talk To Him On Public Property For Up To Four Minutes Or Until He Wants To Go, Whichever Comes First.

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.

People Ask, 'why Would You Cast Yourself In Your Movie?' And, For Me, It's More Like An Achievement That I Am Now Not Playing All The Parts, You Know? Like I Was For So Long, In All My Performances And A Lot Of My Short Movies. So, That's Where I'm Coming From, Not Out Of A Kind Of Actress-y Sense Of Myself. I Mean, I Don't Really See Myself As An Actress, But More From Performance: This Is How You Make Something. You Do It Yourself. You're In It And You Write It. I Think I Keep Doing It That Way, 'cause It's My Way. It's What Makes Me Feel Like I Know How To Do It.

In The Weeks That Followed, We Amazed Ourselves. Our Habits Slid Apart Easily...and Our Very Few Intimacies Were Simply Discontinued. Where Did They Go, Those Things We Did? Were They Recycled? Did Some New Couple In China Do Them? Were A Swedish Man And Woman Foot To Foot At This Very Moment?

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.

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!"

When I Was Fifteen, A Dark Shape Came Into My Room At Night. It Was Dark, But It Glowed, Which Is The First Of Many Facts You Will Have To Tackle With Your Imagination. It Wasn't In The Shape Of A Person, But Right Away I Knew It Was Like A Person In Every Way Except For How It Looked. As It Turns Out, Our Looks Are Not The Main Thing That Makes Us Human.

I Could Not Make A Move Without Making Love.

My Way Into Making Movies - Into Making Things Is General - Has Been Through Performing.

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.

I Made Orange Juice From Concentrate And Showed Her The Trick Of Squeezing The Juice Of One Real Orange Into It. It Removes The Taste Of Being Frozen. She Marveled At This, And I Laughed And Said, Life Is Easy. What I Meant Was, Life Is Easy With You Here, And When You Leave, It Will Be Hard Again.

That Is My Problem With Life, I Rush Through It, Like I'm Being Chased. Even Things Whose Whole Point Is Slowness, Like Drinking Relaxing Tea. When I Drink Relaxing Tea I Suck It Down As If I'm In A Contest For Who Can Drink Relaxing Tea The Quickest.

I Went To The Bedroom And Lay On The Floor, So As Not To Mess Up The Covers.

I Knew The Beginning And The End – I Just Had To Dream Up A Convincing Middle.

People Tend To Stick To Their Own Size Group Because It's Easier On The Neck. Unless They Are Romantically Involved, In Which Case The Size Difference Is Sexy. It Means: I Am Willing To Go The Distance For You.

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Alessandra Ambrosio

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