Miranda July Quotes

Unless you hit your television with a sledgehammer, you're not going to be able to be an individual.

What I object to in Mother is that she wants me to think her thoughts. Apart from the question of hypocrisy, I prefer my own.

I think talent, especially in acting, is being wholly yourself within the context of yourself.

No one should part with their individuality and become that of another.

In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized.

Very few people are original. There's very little original anything out there. Because to be original means you have to stand alone.

Being put in a group, I hate that. I don't think anyone likes it. Everyone just wants to be their own person.

You can't just sit there and do the lines. You have to do something revealing or unusual.

Originality exists in every individual because each of us differs from the others. We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves.

Of course I am proud of my dad and where I come from, but I do have my own way of working my own style.

Whatever may be thought of my art, it is my own; and I would rather possess a freehold, though but a cottage, than live in a palace belonging to another.

If I've got a script, you think I'll go to Hollywood to get money? I was bored with the people around me, so I just created my own movie, my own character. I'm the story of my own movie, and you know what? My movie is going to be better.

I don't want to be anyone's mimic.

I have my own thing going on; I don't want to imitate anyone else.

I am very much my own person and my own artist.

Like the greats, you want to make your own story yourself, and not be a copy of another.

No matter how much a young man likes to think for himself, he is always trying to model himself on some abstract pattern largely derived from the example of the world around him. And a man, no matter how conservative, shows his own worth by his personal deviation from that pattern.

Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist.

It's a shame to waste [the uniqueness that is you], by doing what someone else has done.

Seek freedom from the conformity of styles

People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favor.

Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!

If you are worried about what others might think and about how your position in the group might be jeopardized, then you will never really create anything.

Each individual's way is going to be different. Never follow anybody. That is the greatest calamity that can happen to a man. Once you start following somebody else, you become a carbon copy. You become an imitation.

I just sit there and try to think of stuff that I could do that's a little different but still not step outside of who I am.