Maria Bamford > Quotes

“If you stay alive for no reason at all, please do it for spite.”
― Maria Bamford

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of the intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the beauty in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you lived here. This is to have succeeded.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“I’m very fond of of suddenly adopting a new set of ideals in order to receive welcome from any rigid group of weirdos.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“I’m not suicidal, but I’m also not particularly psyched.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“I say, go big or go home, or actually go very small and stay home because you’re so freaked out by food and your brain distorting your appearance due to malnutrition.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“So there you go: I am not a trustworthy narrator of my own experience. I may be making stuff up. But it felt like that’s what happened. I felt all alone, but I was not at all alone and I was loved and maybe even having a great time. And that may still describe me now, despite my whinging.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“We cannot, of course, physically harm the President of the United States, but it is not illegal to lead him into a bramble, some uneven pavement, rocky terrain. Let your deteriorating roads, bridges, and public schools work for us.”
― Maria Bamford, Weakness is the Brand

“I sleep hard; I dream harder!”
― Maria Bamford

“The hours put in—not necessarily the passion felt, but the time spent—will get you somewhere, if not everywhere.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“He’s been told that his mentals are “treatment-resistant,” which sounds a lot like “noncompliant” heart disease or “won’t play ball” multiple sclerosis.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“Twelve-step programs are rife with mottoes that people repeat solemnly as if rhyming, repetition, and puns are the equivalent of wisdom. Nothing changes if nothing changes. Come for the vanity, stay for the sanity. If you hang around the hardware store, you’re going to eventually buy a hammer. If I may, I’d like to pitch a few more twelve-step slogans to the worldwide fellowship: Hogs log, get out and jog! (IT HAS TO MAKE SENSE? Oh, okay—I thought wisdom was more about rhyming!) If I’m not calling, I’m stalling, and that leads to bawling and hauling. Drugs and ass got me here, but free coffee gave me a ride home. Booze is dumb and I’m no dummy! So how do I reconcile my atheist hypocrisy while still attending these groups? My favorite twelve-step slogan is Take what you want and leave the rest. This one slogan is how I’m able to rationalize my attendance and constant rule-breaking. And,”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“Even bitches who live on pickles and cocaine have their limits.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“As for myself, because I am not great, I allow a wide berth of behaviors and missteps by my loved ones. Beggars can’t be choosers, everybody goes home #nofriendsleftbehind, I don’t care what you do as long as we can talk about it later. But I respect separating the righteous wheat from the pointless chaff.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“Romantic partnerships remind me of stand-up comedy. Some people will have a very strong opinion of your creation (the relationship). Everyone is an expert.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“GOOD means known, but it’s also a conscious decision to see it as GOOD.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“Diagnos-YES!”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“But feeling ashamed and not telling anyone about it has NEVER HELPED. My hope is that by telling people about all this stuff, maybe others will relate. And then I won’t feel alone? And yes, of course, I’ll call my psychiatric nurse, Matt. Though he just changed insurances and I need to find somebody else. And Scott will call his therapist and his psychiatrist. And yes, we will call Deda and Jim from our Recovering Couples Anonymous meeting we’ve been attending and they will laugh. Deda will say, “Are you trying to scare each other?” Yes, yes we are! We thought it might help! And yes, twelve-steppers, we are “WORKING THE STEPS of the program,” you sanctimonious church basement carps! We are on step four, if you must know. I’d like to blame the above morning episode on myself or my poor diet or the city of Los Angeles or something about how and who I am that might be solved, but let’s just call it a Thursday.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“FREE COFFEE Get to know every single barista/o in your local coffee shop. That’s Emma, Jason, Helen, Anjara, Brooklyn, and Jeremy! And because there’s high turnover, now it’s Angela, Jeremiah, Lupe, Jason, and Carmela! Oops—now Amber, Kat, Jonny, and Jason! Learn the names of their pets. Ask about their cat, Stanley. Like and repost their self-made music videos of ballet dancing while high. Give them your address and the code to get into your house to use the pool. After two to seven months of this, forget to pay. That’s twelve ounces of your favorite coffee beverage gratis! Become CONSUMED WITH GUILT. You just STOLE five-dollars-plus out of the pocket of a small, family-owned business in your own neighborhood! Anja, the owner, will find out and you will be BANNED. Within twenty-four hours, send ten dollars via Venmo to Anja. REPEAT THIS PROCESS FOR DECADES. 2. Diagnos-YES! Why I need so badly to belong somewhere: because there’s something really wrong with me!”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“COOKIE CLUB Set a day every week, like MONDAY NIGHT. Tell everyone you know that you have a Monday-night cookie club. LMK what happens.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“What have I wanted? To be someone else entirely. Someone who loves to live. How have I gone about getting that? By participating in CULTS! And by reading self-help books that (temporarily) “CHANGE MY LIFE”!”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“You’re not good at things. Even if you practice them for hours. IT IS OKAY NOT TO BE GOOD AT THINGS DESPITE ONGOING, TREMENDOUS AMOUNTS OF EFFORT AND DESIRE TO IMPROVE.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“People who have met both my father and me say that I am just like him. We share this explosive passive-aggressive dance, a sort of social bulimia, in which we simultaneously try to connect with someone (because we’re lonely) and at the same time send the message that this person is UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO US WHATSOEVER. As I wave to you, I’m backing up. When I hand you a Christmas gift, I shout, “Feel free to regift or sell!” I sit down to talk with you at a party and either monologue my current act for forty-five minutes or s-l-o-w-l-y inch my way farther and farther away while lobbing a barrage of questions over an impenetrable wall of anxiety.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“Tina had been going through some difficulties that involved muffled weeping in the bathroom. I wanted to support and hoped there might be food. (There was not.)”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“I am a withered pouch of low blood pressure in a deteriorating caul of papery skin covered in thick black arm hair.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“RECIPE FOR CHIP OFF THE FLOOR There’s a corn chip on the floor! Somebody must have dropped it. Pick it up. It is now yours. Pop it in your mouth. Savor and delight in the chip. EAT IT OPENLY. This is a gift from an exciting and mysterious universe. You are its Minor God.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“I got a job waitressing poorly at the one Mexican restaurant in town, Hacienda del Sol.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“William Styron’s Darkness Visible, Elyn Saks’s The Center Cannot Hold, Kay Redfield Jamison’s Night Falls Fast, Madness by Marya Hornbacher, and, of course, genius Daniel Smith’s masterpiece on anxiety, Monkey Mind. (Full disclosure:”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“It is because I can’t stop being late or confusing times in my work and personal life that I was trying to change via “step work.” (The steps, FYI, are kind of like a Catholic confession but with peer support, hazy spiritual-type language, behavior modification, and understanding laffs.) After I missed the third appointment we had made, Bernice decided that my admitted poor time management not only wasted her time but also hurt her feelings. Therefore, a seventy-five-year-old Glendale woman who had spent several hours of her final years on earth listening to me and my bunk was compelled to break up with me by text.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“Memorize only this page inside your local independent bookstore while sitting on the floor. Put it back in the sports section and buy Shoe Dog by Phil Knight instead. Then, quickly trade Shoe Dog for the trashed Gideon Bible in the Little Free Library right outside of the bookstore. Next, toss God’s Word in your backyard compost heap. Remember how much you like podcasts.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

“And full disclaimer: cults, books, books about cults, and comedy are no replacement for meds. Medicine is the best medicine.”
― Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere