Miranda July Quotes

I didn't think it was fair to pretend to give of myself when I was so selfishly consumed with my own drives.

There have been times when I'm writing about things that are personally embarrassing. Like any human being, sometimes I can't help but wonder - 'What are the people I know going to think about this?' So I have to remind myself that all is permissible. Art has to be a free space. Language has to be a free space.

There's something really earnest inside me all the time. It's not a cool or fun way to be. Sometimes I would like to experience being someone who's not wired the way I'm wired.

I always wanted everyone to love me, probably because I didn't love myself enough. But now I realize that when you're an artist, you're making the music that's in your head and in your heart, and not for any other reason.

All my life I have struggled to make one authentic gesture.

The writer must be in it; he can't be to one side of it, ever. He has to be endangered by it. His own attitudes have to be tested in it. The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing himself, always.

Everyone always comes to one point in their life as an artist where you can either let your heart guide you or your ego.

Over and over again, I'm trying to express or communicate these big and small struggles to the world, and really to myself.

I've found that in now having experienced what it's like to make records and just through growing up in general that you should be expressive about what's affecting you instead of trying to sing about a subject just for the sake of other people getting something from it.

I want to take the time to think through how I feel and why I feel. I don't want to feign expertise on matters I know nothing about for the purpose of offering someone else my immediate reaction for their consumption.

I'm sick of being self-referential. I don't want to do any more songs that can be accused of being personal.

I try to find what is closest to me in the character. There's many sides to personality, but it's a matter of, do you entertain those specific areas of your personality, or are you afraid to entertain them?

I don't mind finding these ugly sides to my personality and exaggerating them because that's something you can write towards.

If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.

I was raised in an atmosphere of 'everything's fine.' But as I got older, I was like, 'Well no, everything's not fine. There is stuff that's sad.' I am a really sensitive person. I think I am too sensitive sometimes.

The thing is, about a character, it's not about being right, it's about the truth. The truth comes from within, so you have to search as an artist for the truth.

It is almost impossible to reconcile self expression with the creative act.

The hardest thing is spending twelve hours a day accommodating the rest of the world, then going home at night and criticizing it. I would be curious about what I'd write if I didn't have to worry about offending.

Feelings or emotions are the universal language and are to be honored. They are the authentic expression of who you are at your deepest place.

I always call myself an emotionalist. I feel.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what's really happening to me, even if it's a tough pill to swallow for people around me... I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction - they're always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

Writing can flow out when I'm feeling something strongly, whether that's joy, pain, fear, desire or anything else. The challenge is actually later, in the second or third or 100th draft of the music, when it can be so easy to cover up the original sentiments by making the music more ornate or cloaked.

Coming off 'Reflection,' what we really wanted to do was be more vulnerable.

You can't write about a personal struggle if you're going to water it down to meet everyone's expectations about what's appropriate.