Author: Kelsey Mihachik

“Why is false love so proud, and true love so fearful?” – pg. 42

“One day, if you live long enough, you’ll find that more people have forgotten you than still remember you.” – pg. 221

“Most of life, in Larry’s view, was in fact mundane and annoying, like losing your car in the parking lot or having to talk to old friends with whom you no longer have anything in common. Larry wanted to find the funny in those situations.” – pg 32

“I think that what goes on in people’s lives is that most of their mind, most of the day, is occupied with tiny struggles. That’s what people’s lives are about.” – Larry David, pg. 35

“There are just some people who literally have funny lives and things happen to them that sound like stories.” – Jerry Seinfeld, pg. 35

“I feel I am completely devoid of experiences. Other people, they travel, they do things, they have a life. My experiences are so minor. I go for acupuncture or I see something strange on the subway.” – Larry David, pg. 36

“He was afraid that he wouldn’t be funny anymore if he was happy.” – Laurie Lennard, pg. 38

“I’m not allowed to complain anymore about anything. And I feel very restricted by that. I mean, I’m a guy who’s complained his whole life, and all of a sudden I can’t say a word.” Larry David, pg. 42

“Having money did nothing to satisfy his need to work and to be funny.” – pg. 42

“You needn’t love yourself to be a narcissist; you can be just as transfixed by self-loathing.” – Esquire, pg. 67

“Positive is not funny. Nobody laughs at positive. […] But there’s funny in the negative. When you speak in negative terms, the more negative it is, the funnier it is.” – Larry David, pg. 83

“Celebrities are as trivial as us, they just get to express it more.” – pg. 134

“A life-changing experience isn’t, as it turns out, exactly the same as a personality-changing experience.” – pg. 226

“Larry David has said that he needs a great idea or premise to write a great episode.” – pg. 251

“You have to be away from something to really appreciate it.” – pg. 282

“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been infatuated, had crushes, slept with, fucked, and dated many people in my life, but it always faded. I didn’t and don’t like wasting time with someone I know isn’t for me, so nothing ever lasted very long.” – pg. 20

“Being out of control in love is glorious. […] But being out of control in heartbreak…? I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone.” – pg. 27

“There’s one general store everyone goes to. It must be nice to have less options. I feel overwhelmed with options.” – pg. 125

“The things we are most afraid of are the things that will ultimately change our whole makeup.” – pg. 157

“The problem with searching is that you often find everything but the thing you’re looking for.” – pg. 179

“I have been learning how to confidently say no. No for me now is all about making room for more Yes.” – pg. 188

“Memories fascinate me, how they gain or lose weight over time, always fluctuating, […] becoming lighter or heavier the more they need attention.” – pg. 221

“I thought about how pain is also a symptom of transformation. I thought about bouncing back. How we can start again. And again.” – pg. 281

“I hope I’m fulfilled creatively.” – pg. 304

“Love revealed how covered up I was, but heartache broke me open.” – pg. 311

“I began to discover that, if I put the work in before going to bed, I often had a little creative idea overnight.” – pg. 15

“Creative people are much better at tolerating the vague sense of worry that we all get when we leave something unresolved. So if […] you can tolerate that anxiety, you will be able to give yourself the time to come up with a better decision.” – pg. 45

“In order to remove interruptions, […] you have to create a safe place, where you can play. This involves first creating boundaries of space, and then boundaries of time.” – pg. 49

“You go backwards and forwards between the creative mode of thinking and the analytical mode of thinking until, finally, you get to something that’s a bit special. This back-and-forth process is called iteration. It’s what creative people do all the time.” – pg. 64

“Even the very best minds seem to produce work that can divide itself into three stages. First, they produce original work as they learn their craft; second, when they’ve mastered their craft, they begin to express their mature ideas in their best works; third, there’s a tailing-off of their powers, as their insights become more familiar.” – pg. 80

“Others […] never lose their ability to come up with fresh ideas. In other words, they learn to nurture their unconscious, and to trust it. […] The great mathematician John Conway spent much of his time playing games. Playing… keeps you ‘fresh.'” – pg. 81

“Remember just one thing: ‘Brevity is the soul of wit.’ […] Remember the famous apology, ‘Sorry this is such a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.'” – pg. 90

“I don’t have the answers to everything. Or anything.” – pg. x

“There’s nothing more unsettling than seeing one of your parents afraid.” – pg. 24

“If only I could force myself to throw up all of the words, usernames, videos, tweets, and photos I just ingested, I could feel normal. Bulimia for phone use.” – pg. 29

“The need for distraction from thinking about life or death is as old as time.” – pg. 32

“Everyone has one story, if not many, of being bullied when they were younger […]. You never forget the name of the person, or their face, or the awful thing they said to you. Getting insulted is for life, like a tattoo.” – pg. 38

“It always hurts when someone you feel deeply for likes someone new or chooses someone else over you. It hurts worse than it should because you know he doesn’t deserve your hurt and yet he still has it. It never mattered what these other girls looked like or seemed to be like. It’s just that they weren’t me.” – pg. 49

“I know for a fact the saying ‘God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle’ isn’t true because if it were, then God would not have made me a person.” – pg. 57

“Life is just waiting for someone to contact you with something interesting.” – pg. 82

“Seeing my dad cry is like watching a dolphin be murdered.” – pg. 138

“My biggest fear is people hating me, yet I do nothing at all to prevent it from happening.” – pg. 139

“There is something about depression that makes me feel powerful.” – pg. 144

“There are no people who can help you with the issue of hating people.” – pg. 144

“My disposition is persistently that of a teenage boy who wants to leave the dinner table so he can go play Nintendo.” – pg. 146

“The thing is, if you want to have friends who understand you, and you’re someone who is nearly impossible to understand, you might only have one friend. But personally, I’d rather have one friend who understands me than six who would repeat a fucking shit-talk.” – pg. 160

“I am not a people person. I am also not a loner. This is one of the never-ending miseries of being me.” – pg. 192

“And in the midst of worrying about your appearance, your personality, your sexual chemistry, and the opinions they may have formulated about you, you realize that all anyone is actually looking for is someone who isn’t thinking about any of that at all.” – pg. 232

“Every note I get on every script is: She has to find joy in something or no one will like her. And I’m just like, yeah, that checks out.” – pg. 233

“This is super fucking corny, but I guess it took actually seeing the world to remind me what mattered in it.” – pg. 302

“If I had known the pain and shame that goes along with putting yourself out there creatively and being rejected, I probably wouldn’t have been so excited. But I didn’t, so I was.” – pg. 8

“Aging can be scary, and it seems like a lack of awareness can be a gift sometimes.” – pg. 11

“We made something that people didn’t love, which happens. It’s nice when it doesn’t; it sucks when it does.” – pg. 163

“There’s no pain more powerful than your own pain.” – pg. 175

“What I really learned, though, was how fucking fast people forget shit and move on.” – pg. 194

“There’s something about removing myself from my normal baseline of operation that feels exciting and adventurous.” – pg. 233

“I was more than happy to accept being a not-that-funny comedian over any other conceivable option.” – pg. 5

“I love hearing a laugh that’s never existed in the world before. Because every laugh is slightly different. Unique even.” – pg. 11

“We all try and save time. All our little shortcuts. But no matter how much time you save, at the end of your life, there’s no extra time saved up.” – pg. 67

“We don’t know what we want. We only know we don’t want what we have.” – pg. 134

“I love cars. It’s my favorite physical object. I don’t know why I think this. My only theory is, when you’re driving: You’re outside and you’re inside. You’re moving and you’re completely still, all at the same time.” – pg. 152

“I’m a ‘Go with’ guy. I really don’t want to do most things. But, I will ‘Go with.'” – pg. 223

“This has happened to me over and over again in my life. You get so used to doing what you do, you don’t see what it is anymore.” – pg. 254

“The essential building blocks of comedy, very often, are an elegant intertwining of really dumb and really smart.” – pg. 254

“One of the nice things about getting married, besides making the commitment to the person you want to be with, is the rejection of a lot of people you don’t want to be with.” – pg. 267

“Stand-up is about a brief, fleeting moment of human connection.” – pg. 255

“People often ask me where I like to work. What kind of places, theaters, which cities? The place I like to work is in my head. To try and reach someone else’s.” – pg. 356

“All men put all things into one of two categories. It’s either, ‘That’s my problem,’ or ‘That is not my problem.'” – pg. 362

“A man wants the same thing from a woman that he wants from his underwear. Certain amount of support and a certain amount of freedom.” – pg. 363

“The bored female is a very dangerous individual.” – pg. 367

“I have millions of comedy friends and I really do love them all. Especially the way they shake their heads all the time like ‘How the hell do you even do this?’ And of course, we never really do figure it out. The real point of our lives is that we try anyway.” – pg. 454

“One song is all it takes to make a connection.” – pg. 11

“I want to be a person who encourages more humans to do that – to have some private moments of creativity.” – pg. 13

“Inspiration has to be invited.” – pg. 17

“So if you can give yourself over to a process and get comfortable with disappearing, you’re likely to harvest some hard-to-find truth along the way, both about yourself and about what you’re trying to say.” – pg. 19

“In the end, learning how to disappear is the best way I’ve found to make my true self visible to myself and others.” – pg. 19

“Not knowing how to do something is a poor excuse not to try.” – pg. 26

“Writing a song is really just the ability to hear it.” – pg. 32

“When I write […] I’m simultaneously more me and also free of me.” – pg. 54

“It’s something people walk by all the time, something so ingrained in our environment that it’s become invisible, something so obvious nobody sees it anymore, but then someone figures out how to say what it is, or how to see it, and everyone else says, ‘Of course!'” – pf. 55

“Everyone I’ve ever met who has impressed me as a musician or a songwriter has also taught me about someone else’s music besides their own.” – pg. 112

“When they’re well constructed, finished songs often sound effortless, and I’m here to tell you that takes work.” – pg. 113

“None of it means anything if you’re not excited by the discovery of what you’re making.” – pg. 136

“Don’t undervalue things that come easy.” – pg. 148

“I believe we stop ourselves sometimes when we’re happy. […] Sometimes you’re stuck because you’re anxious about something you love. […] Just let a song be itself. […] A song will always love you back, but sometimes it just needs a little space.” – pg. 149

“I don’t like every song I write, but I like that I wrote it.” – pg. 156

“Songs are pleas. It’s all about reaching out and pulling in… or pushing out and looking in.” – pg. 158

“It is risky to reveal oneself, but I am compelled to do it.” – pg. 5

“I was born with the talent for fucking off so majorly.” – pg. 13

“Hello, I am a woman on a blue and green sphere that has dollops and doinks of mountains all over it.” – pg. 29

“Without a person to love, I am too full of what must be let out.” – pg. 37

“I have always known that I would die for love. I think I am dying while or because of waiting for it.” – pg. 39

“To have to kill even one of my hearts to match up with you is simply not worth it to me.” – pg. 54

“As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid that someone else will erase me by denying me love.” – pg. 85

“You could argue that the bottom of the pit is where you plant the start of the thing that is made to travel to the light.” – pg. 106

“Hello, I live in a constant state of growth and regeneration without being obsessed with the threat of decay.” – pg. 190

“I died but it was so small compared to how I had lived so much and for so long with you, alive. One death was so small compared to all the things that we did in our life, things that we did all the way through, right to our ends.” – pg. 194

“I died after I lived my life with you, because that was the story. […] It is what I knew when I died.” – pg. 205

“My ex-husband says to me on the phone, after I tell him that I am lonely and I think I am weird around men, that I am not weird but that I am trying to force an intimacy that needs time to grow.” – pg. 212

“I’m tired of looking for a place in another.” – pg. 213

“You protect yourself and all the little weirds that make up who you are.” – pg. 216

“I am that mysterious stranger that I hoped to meet.” – pg. 220

“Thank you to the people who encouraged me, assisted me, bolstered me, listened to me even though that must have been very irritating at times, loved me, hired me, fired me, took me in, and let me go.” – pg. 223

“Positively occupying one’s time is also a matter of health, both physical and mental.” – pg. 34

“If things are relatively calm, we the people will come up with any old bullshit to squabble about, because it’s in our nature.” – pg. 45

“Follow-through is what produces the backspin on a basketball shot, that stabilizing centrifugal force that allows a greater level of consistency to be realized in one’s shooting percentage. The same technique can be applied to any task one undertakes in life.” – pg. 48

“If you don’t like the rules as they apply to your art, then break the rules.” – pg. 111

“The evils of society are pervasive enough to drive a person to fight, even though he knows he shouldn’t.” – pg. 143

“We humans are complicated and messy animals in many ways.” – pg. 191

“The people who inspire me never seem to be looking to maximize profits.” – pg. 241

“I think that part of what defines gumption involves a willingness, even a hunger, for one’s mettle to be challenged. […] People with gumption will brittle when less is required of them.” – pg. 246

“If you don’t love your work enough to have a good time doing it, then maybe you’re showing up at the wrong job.” – pg. 247

“Like it or not, if you end a war by being the biggest asshole (by far), you are not really a victor. You’re the biggest asshole who had the last word.” – pg. 251

“A lot of my life is being administrated by ladies! – I don’t think about feminism, or even that they’re women. In all these contexts, they are just people. People who are good at their jobs, doing good work.” – pg. 272

“Find out what makes you kinder, what opens you up and brings out the most loving, generous, and unafraid version of you – and go after those things as if nothing else matters. Because, actually, nothing else does.” – George Saunders, pg. 314

“Words, though, much like a devastating virus, can be so powerful in the way they afflict a population.” – pg. 326

“Humanity scientifically craves perfection, but the natural world of course is imperfect; it is not symmetrical.” – pg. 334

“Being alone is rarely any good, which is why we look for work to do that can be best achieved by many hands.” – pg. 363