Miranda July Quotes

Man would be otherwise. That is the essence of the specifically human.

I think part of what has to happen, somewhere, pretty soon, is that a human template has to come up. We have to start with, OK let's throw out all this other stuff, everything we have thought about it before, throw out all our models, and start with a human. What is a human?

All my life, I never realized you could have a conversation with a ghost.

Poetry helps me understand who I am. It helps me understand the world around me. But above all, what poetry has taught me is the fact that I need to embrace mystery in order to be completely human.

Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.

Anything that's made by humans is about humans, whether it's about gods or aliens or anything; it's about some sort of expressive nature about us.

Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men.

Well, I've claimed to have seen two ghosts in a hotel room.

Art and music is part of what it means to be a human being. And if you're neglecting that, you're basically ignoring a huge side of the brain and a huge side of what it means to be human.

We're not inherently anything but human.

What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.

I think those who object to my characterizing man as simple want somehow to retain a deep mystery at his core.

I'm totally human.

Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That's human nature.

We are the only animal that tells stories.

Our dream is to one day uncover the essence of what makes us human.

Obviously the idea of being human is a very human idea.

I bought Jayne Mansfield's mansion in L.A. after her death. I had met her in England and remembered her perfume. When I moved in, I could smell her, and I saw her apparition.

Art is what defines us, what makes us human.

I'm a writer and this is what I do no matter what name we put to it. Year by year, the world is turning into a darker and stranger place than any of us could want. This is the only thing I do that has potential to shine a little further than my immediate surroundings. For me, each story is a little candle held up to the dark of night, trying to illuminate the hope for a better world where we all respect and care for each other.

We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark, and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night.

I think nighttime is dark so you can imagine your fears with less distraction.

The traditional doctrine of man and not the measurement of skulls and footprints is the key for the understanding of that anthropos who, despite the rebellion of Promethean man against Heaven from the period of Renaissance and its aftermath, is still the inner man of every man, the reality which no human being can deny wherever and whenever he lives, the imprint of a theomorphic nature which no historical change and transformation can erase completely from the face of that creature called man.

I think human beings wouldn't be human without narrative fiction.

What is it that distinguishes man from animals? It is not his upright posture.