Jenny Lawson Quotes

You are alive. You have fought and battled them. You are scarred and worn and sometimes exhausted and were perhaps even close to giving up, but you did not.

It's not that I'm afraid of homeless people any more than non-homeless people. I'm afraid of something much more complicated. I look at them and think, "Is that my future?

I am furiously happy. It's not a cure for mental illness ... it's a weapon, designed to counter it. It's a way to take back some of the joy that's robbed from you when you're crazy.

It was freezing, but the cold effortlessly numbed my feet and aching hands. I walked quietly, barefoot, to the end of the block, leaving my shoes behind to remind me how to find my way home.

People who think it's so hard to find a needle in a haystack are probably not quilters. Needles find you. Just walk on the haystack for a second. You'll find the needle.

I just realized that men get stiletto knives and women get stiletto shoes. This whole thing is fucked.

When life gives you lemons you should freeze them and use them to throw at your enemies using some sort of trebuchet.

Laura, they rub your face off using DIAMONDS.

Truthfully though, there are some advantages to being on antipsychotics. This might seem silly but when you go to the pharmacy and you're standing in line with twenty germy people sneezing all over the place you can honestly say, "Would you mind if I went first? I have to pick up my antipsychotic meds and I REALLY needed them yesterday." This tactic also works for grocery lines, the DMV, and some buffets.

Depression is like … when you don't have any scissors to cut that thick plastic safety tie off the new scissors that you just bought because you couldn't find your scissors. And then you just say, "Fuck it," and try everything else in the world to get the scissors to open, but all you have are plastic butter knives and they aren't doing anything, so you stand in the kitchen holding scissors that you can't use because you can't find scissors and then you get frustrated and throw the scissors in the garbage disposal and sleep on the couch for a week. And that's what depression is like.

Call me 'that-weird-chick-who-says-"fuck"-a-lot'" is probably more accurate,

I stood at the end of the street, catching snow in my mouth, and laughed softly to myself as I realized that without my insomnia and anxiety and pain I'd never have been awake to see the city that never sleeps asleep and blanketed up for winter. I smiled and felt silly, but in the best possible way.

I wonder if when birds are new they ever try to land on clouds? And if so is it like when you think you've gone down the last stair but there's still another one and you step off and make that weird "oof" noise and everyone looks at you? That would suck. But at least birds are hidden when they fuck up and fall through clouds.

What I want you to know: Dying is easy. Comedy is hard. Clinical depression is no fucking picnic.

We all get our share of tragedy or insanity or drama, but what we do with that horror is what makes all the difference. I

Listen to the tiny voice inside your head.

Unless it's trying to tell you that you're worthless.

Then, fuck that voice. That voice is an asshole.

I made an appointment with a sleep doctor, who explained that during the sleep study people would be watching me sleep and monitoring my brain waves to see how I reacted during the four stages of sleep. I'd explain those stages if I could spell all the complicated words but they basically range from "Wide awake" to "Just barely not dead."

My sleep cycle is a bit more elaborate.

The seven stages of sleep (according to my body)

STAGE 1: You take the maximum dose of sleeping pills, but they don't work at all and then you glare at their smug bottles at three a.m., whispering, "You lying bastards."

STAGE 2: You fall asleep for eight minutes and you have that dream where you've missed a semester of classes and don't know where you're supposed to be and when you wake up you realize that even in your sleep you're fucking your life up.

STAGE 3: You close your eyes for just a minute but never lose consciousness and then you open your eyes and realize it's been hours since you closed your eyes and you feel like you've lost time and were probably abducted by aliens.

STAGE 4: This is the sleep that you miss because you're too busy looking up "Symptoms of Alien Abduction" on your phone.

STAGE 5: This is the deep REM sleep that recharges you completely and doesn't actually exist but is made up by other people to taunt you.

STAGE 6: You hover in a state of half sleep when you're trying to stay under but

To all who walk the dark path, and to those who walk in the sunshine but hold out a hand in the darkness to travel beside us: Brighter days are coming. Clearer sight will arrive. And you will arrive too. No, it might not be forever. The bright moments might be for a few days at a time, but hold on for those days. Those days are worth the dark.

When I was in junior high I read a lot of Danielle Steele. So I always assumed that the day I got engaged I'd be naked, covered in rose petals, and sleeping with the brother of the man who'd kidnapped me.

I can't think of another type of illness where the sufferer is made to feel guilty and question their self-care when their medications need to be changed.

Then she told me that the Americans with Disabilities Act was recently interpreted as allowing "people with anxiety disorders to travel with an emotional-support pony on airlines." So basically I could bring a goddamn pony on board with me. I'm pretty sure a pony wouldn't fit under my seat or in my lap, but I rather liked the idea of a small medicinal horse standing in the aisle beside me while I braided his mane.

I've often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that "normal" people also might never understand, and that's what FURIOUSLY HAPPY is all about. It's about taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they're the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence. It's the difference between "surviving life" and "living life." It

P.P.P.P.S. Also, if you try to make a shrimp boil, but the bag of spices bursts, and so you just toss it in along with whatever spices you can find in the pantry
you can make homemade pepper spray. Unintentionally.
And everyone at your dinner party will run outside for the next hour, coughing and tearing up as if they've been maced, because technically they kind of have been, because mace was one of the spices I found in the panty. I blame whoever makes spice out of mace, and I remind my gasping dinner guests that even if I did mace them, I did it in an old fashioned, homemade, Martha Stewart sort of way. With love.

Also I couldn't find the packing peanuts for the booze, so I just drank it all. YOU WILL MISS ME SO MUCH ONCE I'M SOBER ENOUGH TO WAKE UP AND DRIVE AWAY.

that's when I realized that popularity is a big bunch of bullshit. Recognizing that popularity is sometimes the equivalent of human mange sort of cured me from wanting it.

A hug is like a strangle you haven't finished yet.

One moment I'm perfectly fine and the next I feel a wave of nausea, then panic. Then I can't catch my breath and I know I'm about to lose control and all I want to do is escape. Except that the one thing I can't escape from is the very thing I want to run away from ... me.

Dear Victor: Wow. That ... really got out of hand. I'm sending this cat in as a peace offering. I forgive you for all the stuff you wrote on the walls about my sister, and I'm going to just ignore all the stuff you wrote about my "giant ass" (turn cat over for rest) because I love you and you need me. Who else loves you enough to send you notes written on cats? Nobody, that's who. Also, I stapled a picture of us from our wedding day to the cat's left leg. Don't we look happy? We can be that way again. Just stop leaving wet towels on the floor. That's all I ask. I'm low-maintenance that way. Also, this cat needs to go on a diet. I shouldn't be able to write this much on a cat and still have room left over.

On the other side of fear is freedom. And usually fewer fingers than you started with.

Rory the Dead Raccoon stood up on his hind legs, his arms stretched out in glee. He looked like he was the most excited member of your surprise party, or like a Time Lord in the process of regenerating. His

If you could hear the insane stuff going on in my head, it would scare the hell out of you. Probably. Or fascinate you. Depends on how easily you're startled, I guess.

It's interesting with my blog, because it feels to me less like a blog and more like a forum, because my readers are so funny and leave hysterical comments. And I'm not being humble when I say that very often, the comments are so much better than the post originally was.

I had no idea how complicated and solitary it could be to write a simple book.

When I was little, my father used to sell guns and ammo at a sporting goods store, but I always told everyone he was an arms dealer, because it sounded more exciting.

Me: Yes, I'd like some colon cleanse. It's something that cleans you out so your antidepressants work better.
Pharmacist: I think you're using your antidepressants wrong. They go in your mouth.

Women scare enough, but bloggers can be even more frightening to deal with. Most bloggers are emotionally unstable and are often awkward in social situations, which is why so many of us turned to blogging in the first place. Also, they are always looking for something to write about, so if you fuck something up it will be blogged, Facebooked, and retweeted until your death.

You don't even know these people in your blurbs. Most of them are dead and Stephen King is probably going to press charges. We're really going to need to increase your visits. - MY CURRENT SHRINK

Sometimes stunned silence is better than applause.

AWESOME. In fact, I'm starting a whole movement right now. The FURIOUSLY HAPPY movement. And it's going to be awesome because first of all, we're all going to be VEHEMENTLY happy, and secondly because it will freak the shit out of everyone that hates you because those assholes don't want to see you even vaguely amused, much less furiously happy, and it will make their world turn a little sideways and will probably scare the shit out of them. Which will make you even more happy. Legitimately. Then the world tips in our favor. Us: 1. Assholes: 8,000,000. That score doesn't look as satisfying as it should because they have a bit of a head start. Except you know what? Fuck that. We're starting from scratch. Us: 1. Assholes: 0.

Last month, as Victor drove me home so I could rest, I told him that sometimes I felt like his life would be easier without me. He paused a moment in thought and then said, It might be easier. But it wouldn't be better.

I don't need Botox," Laura countered. "I got Bangtox. It's when you decide to get bangs to cover your forehead wrinkles. It totally works and no one injects poison in your face." I

I think that's how love works. Sometimes it means doing the washing up when it's not your mess, and sometimes it's driving to the airport three times in one week to pick up a loved one, and sometimes it's all unexpected bears and possible surprise giraffes.

Because it was the first time in my life that I gave myself permission to be me. I was still shy and self-conscious and terrified of people, but Jenkins had essentially freed me of the bonds of having to try to fit in.

There's so much shame involved in not being like everyone else. But I learned that the things that made me unique were good. Dealing with problems can be awful. But in the end I got positive results. I don't think I would have been a writer if I didn't have anxiety.

everything in the world either is or isn't pandas

Depression is like ... when you don't want cheese anymore. Even though it's cheese.

It's called "concoctulary,"2 y'all.

And whenever I had menstral cramps, I could just pretend that Voldemort was close.

The dead raccoon's name was Rory. I fell in love with him the instant I saw him because he looked exactly like Rambo, the rescued, orphaned raccoon who lived in my bathtub when I was little. Rory hadn't been lucky enough to be adopted by a small child who'd dress him up in small shorts sets and let him turn her sink into his own tiny waterfall. Instead, Rory had fallen in with a bad crowd and ended up as roadkill, but my friend Jeremy (a burgeoning taxidermist) saw great potential (and very few tire marks) on the cadaver and decided that Rory's tiny spirit should live on in the most disturbingly joyous way possible.

Imagine having a disease so overwhelming that your mind causes you to want to murder yourself. Imagine having a malignant disorder that no one understands. Imagine having a dangerous affliction that even you can't control or suppress. Imagine all the people living life in peace. Imagine the estate of John Lennon not suing me for using that last line. Then imagine that same (often fatal) disease being one of the most misunderstood disorders ... one that so few want to talk about and one that so many of us can never completely escape from.

I was in the midst of a medium-sized panic attack.

I don't have any pictures of the lovely Aboriginal people I met because they think it traps their spirit, and if they're correct then Facebook is basically creating a living hell. Which is really not that surprising, now that I say it out loud.

I judge myself by the shiny, pretty people I see at parent-teacher meetings, or on Facebook, or Pinterest, who seem to totally have their shit together and never have unwashed hair. They never wait until Thursday night to help their kid with the entire week's homework. They don't have piles of dusty boxes in corners waiting to be opened from the move before last. They have pretty, pastel lives, and they are happy, and they own picnic baskets and napkins and know how to recycle, and they never run out of toilet paper or get their electricity turned off. And it's not even that I want to be one of those people. I fucking hate picnics. If God wanted us to eat on the ground He wouldn't have invented couches. I just don't want to feel like a failure because my biggest accomplishment of the day was going to the bank.

This theory worked well for my sister, who has never been sick a day in her life, and is one of those Amazonian women who could squat in a field to have a baby and then pick the baby up and keep on hoeing, except also the field would be on fire, and she'd be all, "Fuck you, fire!" and walk through it like that scary robot in The Terminator.

Sometimes the depression is mild enough that I mistake it for the flu or mono,

*Spoiler alert: Bambi's mom doesn't make it.

Besides, I wasn't the only one with sleep problems, as Victor had been talking in his sleep since he was a kid. When he was eight he was travelling with his dad and sat up in a darkened hotel room at two a.m., opened his eyes, and raised his arm to point toward the dark hall, saying, "Who's that man standing in the corner?" Then he lay back down and went straight back to sleep while his father quietly shit himself. Metaphorically. Probably.

I've tried many torturous techniques to make my outsides fit the ridiculous standards society has set but it never ends well because my body lives in reality and it's a reality that has too much cheese in it.

STAGE 2: You fall asleep for eight minutes and you have that dream where you've missed a semester of classes and don't know where you're supposed to be and when you wake up you realize that even in sleep you're fucking your life up.

Which sort of shows why my body is an idiot, because forced narcolepsy is pretty much the worst defense ever.

It's tempting to start each sentence with an apology or disclaimer. To preface everything with "In my life I've found" so that people can't yell at me for being wrong (I often am) or misinformed (sure) or overly emotional (HOW DARE YOU). ... That's one of the frightening things about writing a book that no one ever tells you. You have to pin down your thoughts and opinions and then they exist on a page, ungrowing, forever.

Even at age 10, I already knew that I was different from most people. My anxiety disorder was still years from being diagnosed, but it affected me quite deeply. I was too afraid to speak out in class, too nervous to make real friends.

Just cheer up is almost universally looked at as the most unhelpful depression cure ever.

I rented sloths by the hour.

Jesus gave me this book when he was done with it, saying, "You have got to read this shit, Kevin. It's fucking fantastic." Jesus is terrible with names. - ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Why would I want to do more when I'm already doing so well at nothing?

Refrigerators are good for keeping homemade moonshine less gross. Freezers are good for keeping rattlesnakes less angry. Garages are good to hide in when your wife finds either.

It was my job to accidentally make money, and his job to make sure I didn't lose it while I was doing wobbly cartwheels in the parking lot after the bars closed.

Also, whenever I read this paragraph to people who don't live in the South, they get hung up on the fact that we had furniture devoted to just guns, but in rural Texas pretty much everyone has a gun cabinet. Unless they're gay. Then they have gun armoires.

I've always been a fan of therapy. You spend an entire hour talking about yourself and someone has to fake being fascinated by the strange assemblage of minutiae that is you.

No matter how shitty it got, I could always look back and say, "At least I don't have my arm stuck up a cow's vagina." In fact, that's kind of become my life's motto. It's also what I say when I'm at a loss for words when talking to people who are grieving the loss of their grandparents.

And God was like, "It's not a tumor. That's your appendix. Appendixes go at the end. Read a book, dude." Then Adam was all, "Really? Because I don't want to second-guess you but it seems like a design flaw. Also that snake in the garden told me it doesn't even do anything." And God shook his head and muttered, "Jesus, that fucking snake is like TMZ." And then Adam was like, "Who's Jesus?" and God said, "No one yet. It's just an idea I'm throwing around." And

I'm terrible at being one of those moms who can sit in the bleachers or dance studios and make forced small talk with parents who all seem to know (and secretly hate) each other and who never seem to show up in pajamas or mismatched shoes. I'm continually saying something awkward and inappropriate, like "I thought this was just for fun" or "No, actually I don't think that toddler is too fat for ballet.

That raccoon is my goddamn role model. He is the worst and best Patronus ever, and I want to be just like him when I grow up.

When Victor was making Skype calls for work, I'd silently crawl up behind him and have Rory slowly and menacingly rise up over Victor's shoulder until the person on the call froze because they noticed a mentally unbalanced raccoon was leaning in like a furry, eavesdropping serial killer. Then Victor would realize Rory was behind him and he'd sigh that sigh he does so well and remind himself to lock his office door. If anything, though, Victor should have thanked me, because the perfect test to see if your friends and coworkers really have your back is if they're willing to say, "Hey, there's a raccoon creeping on you.

When I wake up in the morning I often find messages left to me on my phone. Then I read the messages and I suspect that I'm being stalked by a madwoman. And I am. That madwoman is me. The calls are coming from inside the house. Some

So then I went on the Internet to find out why that is and apparently we yawn when other people yawn because we see them getting lots of delicious air and our brain is all, FUCK, THAT LOOKS DELICIOUS. GRAB SOME QUICK BEFORE THAT BITCH TAKES IT ALL.

This is the same reason I listen to a lot of uber-conservative Republican radio. Because I want to know what is on the minds of my enemies.

Interestingly, female kangaroos have three vaginas, but male kangaroos only have a two-pronged penis. It's like they've started a Darwinian game of one-upmanship and the girls are winning. (Fascinating factoid: Kangaroos also drool on themselves to keep cool [because nothing looks cooler than a drooling kangaroo] but that's helpful to know because when you see them drooling at the mouth it doesn't necessarily mean that they have rabies. It just means they're hot [hot referring to their temperature, not sexiness]. If you find drooling kangaroos sexy you probably need help.) I

Someone once said that if you make something no one hates, no one will ever love it either, and that's true.

I believe it was Sartre who said, "Hell is other people," and I suspect he wrote that after spending an hour with overinvolved parents who won't stop yelling at coaches, instructors, or crying four-year-olds who really just want a snow cone.

I'd convinced myself that girls are like small bears: cute to look at, but far too dangerous to have lunch with.

Grandpa did everything at his own pace, a speed that my sister and I referred to as 'when snails attack.' ... My grandparents' house was only about ten miles from ours, but the ride there would necessitate sandwiches packed for the trip, and several books to keep us occupied.

They gave me drugs and told me to see a gallbladder specialist to make sure the stone had passed. I told them that hamsters can only blink one eye at a time. I considered this a fair trade but they billed my insurance company anyway.

If I cannot see the moon, I'll make my own.

My old e-mail addresses are like bars I've been kicked out of and can never return to.

I wish someone had told me this simple but confusing truth: Even when everything's going your way you can still be sad. Or anxious. Or uncomfortably numb. Because you can't always control your brain or your emotions even when things are perfect.

Are asparaguses just artichokes that haven't grown properly? Like they started smoking and got really skinny, like supermodels? *

The first thing I do when I come home is check the refrigerator for cats because I'm convinced that if one dies, my husband will hide it in there because I don't cook and so I won't see it. I do drink Cokes, though, so technically he should hide the corpse in the oven. And now I need to start checking the oven.

Like books, the Internet has saved my life. It helped me recognize that so many people I adore suffer from the same things I do.

Those times are the hardest. When you can see yourself confined to your bed because you have no strength or will to leave, and then you find yourself yelling at someone you love because they want to help but they can't. When you wake up in a gutter after trying to drink or smoke or dance away the ache, or the lack thereof. Those times when you are more demon than you are you.

If you'd like to quickly round up a whole lot of assholes all in one spot I suggest going to the airport.

Is it norma to regert not making a sex tape back when you were younger and your boobs pointed vaguely at the ceiling when you were lying on your back? Because I feel like no one ever talks about that.
- Furiously Happy

Usually your kids' positive qualities come less from your making them awesome and more from just not intentionally squashing the random things they're inherently born with that make them awesome.

you can't grow without acknowledging that we are all made up from the weirdness that we try to hide from the rest of the world.

I am the Wizard of Oz of housewives (in that I am both "Great and Terrible" and because I sometimes hide behind the curtains

Don't make the same mistakes that everyone else makes. Make wonderful mistakes. Make the kind of mistakes that make people so shocked that they have no other choice but to be a little impressed.

it would be hard to believe that a man had invented walls when most of them couldn't even be bothered to close the bathroom door while they're using it.

That's when I consider chopping off their arms and then blaming them for not picking up their severed arms so they can take them to the hospital to get reattached. Just pick them up and take them to get fixed. IT'S NOT THAT HARD, SARAH. I pick up stuff all the time. We all do. No, I'm not going to help you because you have to learn to do this for yourself. I won't always be around to help you, you know. I'm sure you could do it if you just tried. Honestly, it's like you don't even want to have arms.

We're better than Galileo. Because he's dead.