Meg Wallace > Meg's Quotes

“The closest thing to being cared for is to care for someone else.”
― Carson McCullers, The Square Root of Wonderful

“I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I laughed and said, Life is easy. What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“That day I carried the dream around like a full glass of water, moving gracefully so I would not lose any of it.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“Some people are uncomfortable with silences. Not me. I’ve never cared much for call and response. Sometimes I will think of something to say and then I ask myself: is it worth it? And it just isn’t.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea I suck it down as if I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest.”
― Miranda July

“He pulled away, but his eyes held my eyes like hands.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“She never inquired, but she never recoiled, either. This is a quality that I look for in a person, not recoiling.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“Live the dream, Potato.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“When you can see the beauty of a tree, then you will know what love is.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“She bludgeoned me with a look of such limitless compassion that I immediately began to cry.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“We come from long lines of people destined never to meet.”
― Miranda July

“We really wanted to know all the unknowable things about each other and how we were the same and how we were different, if we even were, maybe nobody is.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“In the recurring dream everything has already fallen down, and I’m underneath. I’m crawling, sometimes for days, under the rubble. And as I crawl I realize that this one was the Big One. It was the earthquake that shook the whole world, and every single thing was destroyed. But this isn’t the scary part. That part always comes right before I wake up. I am crawling and then suddenly I remember: the earthquake happened years ago. This pain, this dying, this is just normal. This is how life is. In fact, I realize, there never was an earthquake. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy for dreaming something else.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“I nodded, pretending I was relaxed. I watched the sunlight sparkling on the water and practiced mind-body integration for a few seconds by quietly hyperventilating.”
― Miranda July, It Chooses You

“I wish there were a class where we could just keep going around the circle. around and around, until we had finally said everything about ourselves.”
― Miranda July

“All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life - where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.”
― Miranda July, It Chooses You

“I knew the beginning and the end – I just had to dream up a convincing middle.”
― Miranda July, It Chooses You

“I moved his hair out of his face. I put my hand under his nose and felt gentle, even breaths. I pressed my lips against his ear and whispered again, It’s not your fault. Perhaps this was really the only thing I had ever wanted to say to anyone, and be told.”
― Miranda July

“I was going to die and it was taking forever.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
― Pema Chödrön

“The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.”
― Alan Alda, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned

“She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, The Collected Writings

“It is the loose ends with which men hang themselves.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

“I remember every single spot of light that ever gouged a shadow beside your bones.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

“Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.”
― Tennessee Williams

“Never inside, I didn't lie in my heart...”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“When I was sixteen, I made the discovery -- love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that's how it struck the world for me.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“The trouble with this world is that everybody has to compromise and conform.”
― Tennessee Williams