Tig Notaro Quotes

Well, I actually tell my son that I don't have any hair because he asked me the same question that I gave it to him when he was born, so he actually still believes that. He's five years old.

What does it feel like to be a parent? What does it feel like to be a child? And that's what stories do. They bring you there. They offer a dramatic explanation, which is always different from an expository explanation.

Children - if you think back really what it was like to be a child and what it was like to know other children - children lie all the time.

I looked at Mum and realized -- twang! -- that she was telling an untruth. A big untruth. And I remember thinking in that instant how thrilling and grown-up it must be to say something so completely untrue, as opposed to the little amateur fibs I was already practiced at -- horrid little apprentice sinner that I was --like the ones about you'd already said your prayers or washed under the fingernails. Yes, I was impressed. I too must learn to say these gorgeous untruths. Imaginary kings and queens would be my houseguests when I was older.

And nothing inspires as much shame as being a parent. Children confront us with our paradoxes and hypocrisies, and we are exposed. You need to find an answer for every why — Why do we do this? Why don’t we do that? — and often there isn’t a good one. So you say, simply, because. Or you tell a story that you know isn’t true. And whether or not your face reddens, you blush. The shame of parenthood — which is a good shame — is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers.

'Monsters,' everybody has the thought of monsters in your closet as a kid, and more importantly, the idea of becoming a parent. We're always kind of looking for those emotional nuggets. They're always at the heart of the story.

I adore falseness. I don't want you to tell me accurately what happened yesterday. I want you to lie about it, to exaggerate, to entertain me.

When I wrote 'Runaways,' I was a naive kid who thought that all parents were evil. Now that I'm a wise old man with children of my own, I am certain that all parents are evil.

There are illegitimate parents, but I don't believe there are any illegitimate children.

When you're a liar, a person of low moral fortitude, really any explanation you need to be true can be true. Especially if you're smart enough. You can figure out a way to justify anything.

As kids, we grow up thinking our parents are perfect and flawless - well, some of us - but they're trying to do the best they can.

That undeniable love for your child... that's something I totally get. And the bumps in the road, too. Like, any parent that thinks they have a perfect relationship with their child is a liar, or they're just not present.

I love my son. He's a great soul. He's a sweet person, but events that have happened to him in his life, some of his own making - as a parent, you really can't take full responsibility for the destruction that can happen to a child.

As a child who loved to read, I had trouble finding honest stories. I felt that adults were always keeping secrets from me, even in the books I was reading.

Before I was a mother, when I played characters that were mothers, I used my imagination, of course.

Let's be honest: Parents like me.

Time has taught me that parents do the best they can with the light they are seeing with. That is what we all do.

I have memories of the time when I was younger and when I believed in Santa Claus, which was the best part of Christmas. Back then, I wrote to Santa every year, hoping that my mom would post the letter with a stamp to the North Pole!

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

I don't want my kid to hear any of the albums that I've made.

I guess sometimes you have to lie to find the truth.

The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.

There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them . . . and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth.

There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.

So I wasn't lying, exactly. I was just choosing among truths.