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People Who Torture Me:
Miranda July Edition
By Stephanie Kemp

“My name is Stephanie Kemp. I write about Moms and Girls and Women and Writing. Unless I find people who can do it better.”

- Stephanie Kemp  
   (Former writer about Moms and Girls and Women and Writing)

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"I work in our converted garage. One leg of my desk is shorter than the others and every day for the past 15 years I've meant to wedge something under it, but every day my work is too urgent — I'm perpetually at a crucial turning point; everything is forever about to be revealed. At five o'clock I have to consciously dial myself down before reentering the house, like astronaut Buzz Aldrin preparing to unload the dishwasher immediately after returning from the moon. Don't talk about the moon, I remind myself. Ask everyone how their day was.”

- Miranda July
   (from her novel, All Fours)

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"Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.”

- Rick Moody
   (to Miranda July)

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“I just started bawling…...It was like he’d quoted the Bible passage that was going to save me.”

- Miranda July
   (to The New Yorker)

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“At some point, our children ride the current of love away from us. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be. If we’re lucky, and we do all the right things, the best we can hope for is to be ignored by our offspring.”

- Annabelle Gurwitch*
   (from her memoir, You’re Leaving When?)

*She tortures me, too.
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“It looks like you sat up all night drinking soy sauce.”

- Tegan Jones
   (to Stephanie Kemp - both moms - but said pre-children.
    You can’t blame motherhood for everything.)                        

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“My mom likes clouds when it’s sunny.”

- Frances Bluming / 3rd Grade Docu-Poem

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“Shit. Now I have to go and write a novel.”

- Stephanie Kemp
   (Novelist)




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3-x_SFcjg8