Chelsea Martin > Quotes

“The space in my life I've designated for you seems to be much too big, and you seem to have a low to medium-level interest in being there.”
― Chelsea Martin, Even Though I Don't Miss You

“The most romantic love stories are the ones where nobody ever gets what they want because they are always pretending they don't want it.”
― Chelsea Martin, Even Though I Don't Miss You

“There is a piece of clothing thrown on the floor in the shape of what I look to myself.”
― Chelsea Martin, Even Though I Don't Miss You

“I guess the mass of all the things you love in the world is less than or equal to the combined weight of all the hearts you've mishandled.”
― Chelsea Martin, Even Though I Don't Miss You

“I know I am sarcastic and accommodating, but I am also small and quiet and won’t like you very much or very often.”
― Chelsea Martin, Everything Was Fine Until Whatever

“It is something to consider, if we're making a list of things to consider, that most relationships are mirrors of yourself, and that those who you choose to be around is largely dependant on what you want to see in yourself at that time.”
― Chelsea Martin, Even Though I Don't Miss You

“Romance is such a funny term.
Funny as in, "I have a fake body part. Guess what it is.”
― Chelsea Martin, Even Though I Don't Miss You

“I'm visualizing the letters that make up your name, but my brain has written it in Courier and the font size is too small and I feel irritated by it.”
― Chelsea Martin, Even Though I Don't Miss You

“It seems like you're moving slightly away from me and it makes me afraid of the Laws of the Universe but I'm afraid to mention it because the phrase "Laws of the Universe" seems so 80's.”
― Chelsea Martin, Even Though I Don't Miss You

“I’m confused about my sexuality, not my sexual orientation.”
― Chelsea Martin, Everything Was Fine Until Whatever

“I was becoming weird, I knew. And it didn't seem like the good kind of weird, like the eccentric arty weird that could be appreciated by other people. It seemed like the bad, dark kind that could unravel a person if it got out of hand.”
― Chelsea Martin, Caca Dolce: Essays from a Lowbrow Life

“Every decision felt like it was to be engraved on a plaque to be placed under a statue commemorating my shittiness, a long list of bad traits under an emboldened title: WE KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING AND YES THIS GIRL SUCKS. I spent years of my life thinking this way and was just in this moment starting to realize how self-important that was. Nobody was watching me, waiting to see what I did. There weren’t any answers to steal. I didn’t have to be good or bad or an artist or a genius and I didn’t have to decide anything right now. All I had to do right now was make the terrible art I said I was going to make. Integrity was something I could offer the world, even if I had nothing else. Even if I didn’t know who I wanted to be. I should just do it so it could be done.”
― Chelsea Martin, Tell Me I'm An Artist

“I’m busy tonight, how about tomorrow, I only really like you for your body anyway, it is so fucked up, hilarious, I want you under my covers with me far away thinking about you, I love you, let’s talk to each other using only allegories, let’s shake hands, please shake my hand, let’s be married and hate each other, let’s move away just to make our friends sad. I want us to be sad forever together and be miserably celibate out of an inability to speak to each other in ways that don’t turn us both off.”
― Chelsea Martin, Everything Was Fine Until Whatever

“I’ve come to think of all my past selves as if they are my daughters. I want to stand up for them, to make sure that even when they were being very bad they were still loved and understood, even if only by their future self.”
― Chelsea Martin, Caca Dolce: Essays from a Lowbrow Life

“30% of an artist’s life is devoted to pretending you like your own ideas
10% is finding enjoyment in making huge irreparable mistakes
6% is going along with other people’s interpretations of your art
5% is believing your own bullshit even as you’re in the process of making it up
10% is trying to view your art from your current love interest’s perspective
9% is keeping a journal by your bed
5% is remembering the feeling of being loudly dissed by the person you most idolized in third grade
5% is finding something obscure to reference constantly
20% is ignoring the people who like your work”
― Chelsea Martin, Tell Me I'm An Artist

“If all it took to be disliked was weird fashion, an off-putting personality, and a commitment to disregarding what anyone thought about me, then I didn't want to be liked.”
― Chelsea Martin, Caca Dolce: Essays from a Lowbrow Life

“Having fun with my friends was giving me spontaneous, hot terror.”
― Chelsea Martin, Tell Me I'm An Artist

“Making art that sucks is the only path to making art that doesn’t suck.' —Me not making art.”
― Chelsea Martin, Tell Me I'm An Artist

“I had seen people fall in love in movies, too, and felt in love from it. And I had seen people die in movies and it seemed more real than death in real life.”
― Chelsea Martin, The Really Funny Thing About Apathy

“What if, instead of feeling guilty about everything all the time, I just . . . didn’t?”
― Chelsea Martin, Tell Me I'm An Artist

“Maybe Art was Real Life and Real Life was Art.”
― Chelsea Martin, Tell Me I'm An Artist

“Maybe struggling to keep up with people who were doing better than me in every way was making me miserable. Maybe I'd be happier if I wasn't trying to be happy. Maybe life would be easier if I just let it wash over me like a wave instead of trying to claw my way out through sand and muck in an attempt to get to a probably imaginary beach where one can supposedly view the waves of the ocean without being pummeled by them”
― Chelsea Martin, Tell Me I'm An Artist

“I’d rather have nothing than something that isn’t exactly what I want.”
― Chelsea Martin, Everything Was Fine Until Whatever

“I feared leaving things behind only because I feared moving forward. I feared finding myself somewhere else and having to figure out who I was there. I didn’t have to be the person I had always been.”
― Chelsea Martin, Tell Me I'm An Artist

“You can tell when I'm going through something emotionally taxing because I will act very natural and unaffected.”
― Chelsea Martin, Mickey

“The ability to connect unrelated moments and feelings and concoct elaborate stories about their meaning is one of my favorite evolutionary adaptations.”
― Chelsea Martin, Even Though I Don't Miss You

“I think it would be nice if not every single thing that happened to me turned into an emotionally complex personality-defining event I'd have to carefully decode for years to come. I think that would be very pleasant.”
― Chelsea Martin, Tell Me I'm An Artist

“The bigger picture is an illusion, something we've made up about the meaning of the bits and pieces that we want to understand. There is no great romance, there is only a series of unremarkable moments, made significant by connecting each moment to select other moments that enhance the bigger picture that you want to see in the first place.”
― Chelsea Martin, Even Though I Don't Miss You