Miranda July Quotes

In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.

Today I start a diary; it is against my usual habbits, but out of a clearly felt need.

I've always used poetry to explain myself to myself. These things just sat in my psyche and then came out.

I'm shy, and I can hide behind my acting and discover the truth about myself because it's cathartic in that way. But I tend not to read reviews.

People think my work is therapeutic. I don't see it that way. It's not like I'm saving money from a weekly therapy visit by writing down my life.

As an actor, you express certain things because they need to be expressed, and then you don't really feel a need to do it again. I want to feel something else, you know?

It was very hard for me to put my life on paper. It was a very intimate process, very psychological, but at the same time liberating. It was like cleaning the closet, like cleaning the house... It was very refreshing.

I used to love writing in my journal.

All my shows are therapy, trying to navigate interesting subjects so I can work them out and to be honest and say some things are beyond the wit of this man.

At school, I was always daydreaming and fiddling in inkwells, but I had to learn to grow up and become articulate. And doing that was what brought me into writing songs. It's like therapy for me, because it exposes what I'm really thinking.

I have kept journals at different times in my life. And a lot of my early notebooks became places where I would just think on the page, trying to parse what I was feeling, to find out what I was thinking.

I looked at myself and realized I had a lot of boundaries up about what I would talk about, what was private for me and what wasn't. I decided to just get rid of them. It was quite liberating.

Music is my form of cleansing and introspection, so I have to grow in order to accomplish it.

When I got into music, that was another way to be by myself.

That's what my music is good for - clearing out the house and being alone.

My only way of processing anything for me is by writing.

What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life.

I write poetry to figure things out. It's what I use as a navigating tool in my life, so when there's something that I just can't understand, I have to "poem" my way through it. For that reason I write a lot about family, because my family confuses me and I'm always trying to figure them out. I write a lot about love, because love is continually confusing in all of its many glorious aspects.

Music is like a mirror in front of you. You're exposing everything, but surely that's better than suppressing. You have to dig deep and that can be hard for anybody, no matter what profession. I feel that I need to actually push myself to the limit to feel happy with the end result.

I’m a writer, and everything I write is both a confession and a struggle to understand things about myself and this world in which I live. This is what everyone’s work should be-whether you dance or paint or sing. It is a confession, a baring of your soul, your faults, those things you simply cannot or will not understand or accept. You stumble forward, confused, and you share. If you’re lucky, you learn something.

I became an actor to escape my own personality. Acting is the most therapeutic thing in the world. You see, through acting you come full circle in your personality and, oh, what a grand time you can have along the way being wonderful people through your characters...I think all the courage that I may lack personally I have as an actor.

When I write, I make discoveries about my feelings.

I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.

Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy. I forget how.

The characters that I create are parts of myself and I send them on little missions to find out what I don’t know yet.