Jessi Klein Quotes

My parents spent countless hours teaching me to read and write. My mother was an English teacher who patiently taught me where to put my periods and commas, and my father, who loves books more than anyone I know, taught me from an early age that books are precious and should be handled gently , "like butterflies.

Ma'am is yet another horrible-sounding word in the lexicon of words that women are stuck with to describe various aspects of their body/life/mental state/hair. Vagina. Moist. Fallopian tubes. Yeast infection. Clitoris. Frizz. These are all terrible words, and yet they are our assigned descriptors. Who made up these words? Women certainly didn't. If, at the beginning of time, right after making vaginas, God had asked me, 'What would you like your most intimate and enjoyable part of yourself to be called?',' I most certainly wouldn't have said, 'Vagina.' No woman would, because vagina sounds like a First World War term that was invented to describe a trench that has been mostly blown apart but is still in use. Even off the very top of my head I feel like I could have come up with something better, like for instance the word papoose, which actually as I'm typing it feels like an incredibly brilliant word for vagina.

I was a woman sobbing in a hotel corridor, which is kind of incredible, because when I was little I thought I was going to be a senator.

Not responding to the texts of a man who has wronged you is truly one of the sweetest pleasures in life..

You know how Bed Bath & Beyond sells those white noise machines that help you sleep? And they usually make ocean noises? I want one that's just David Gergen gently muttering about the economy.

Basically, I was always very interested in comedy, but I was much more sort of academic. And then, after college, loaded with my art history degree, I decided to go work at Comedy Central as a temp.

I remember the first time I heard a co-worker refer to himself as a foodie. It immediately irritated me. Was he implying that he appreciated food more than other people? That his love of eating was somehow more evolved than mine? Don't all people love the thing we can't live without?

If I was president, of course I'd want an amendment banning boy bands, but it just wouldn't be right, and I wouldn't do it. Then again ... I don't want to paint myself into a corner on this one. Let me think about it.

I wanted to structure a day where a hypothetical random snapshot of me looked like Carrie Bradshaw in her kimono, totally relaxed, not Brittany Murphy in Girl, Interrupted, diddling an old chicken under her bed. The

What gets in the way of living with vitality," Tejpal asked.
Everything, I thought to myself.
"Wounds," Tejpal said. She talked about the importance of forgiveness, and how the most important step in forgiveness is to allow yourself to feel the pain of the hurt you received. Only then would the pain begin to heal.
Suddenly, Dracula leaned forward and spoke up. Even though this wasn't really a situation where you were supposed to speak without being called on. "That's not true," she blurted out angrily, her Long Island accent pulling all her vowels downward. "There are some things people do that hurt you forever and that cause scars that will never heal. Just 'cause you think about them doesn't mean they're going away."
All the women in the room turned around to stare at this angry person. This was supposed to be a touchy-feely, self-discovery happy place where Tejpal was in charge. You are not supposed to attack Tejpal. I sensed that people thought she was crazy and normally I would find her as annoying for not getting it as everyone else was, but instead I felt a wave of deep compassion. It was the first time during my visit to Miraval that I felt attuned to how deeply, painfully exposed people can allow themselves to be when there's even a sliver of permission to be honest.

This is the lament of older women, and ultimately of all old people - that you become invisible. It is especially hard for women, though, whose entire lives have been spent spinning around the idea that if no one is staring at you, you've somehow failed.

You know what? You had a rough weekend, but people are basically good. They really are. We're all just on this crazy blue marble together.

This was when I learned one of the biggest secrets of being a woman, which is that much of the time, we don't feel like we're women at all.

Everyone wants to say they hate lawyers, and yet I've never met a parent who didn't want their kid to be a lawyer.

As a wolf, I'm a diamond in the rough. I crack jokes. My whole life is about trying, about speaking up in order to be seen, about howling with laughter or howling out how I see the world.

The very first time I did standup, I went to an open mike on the Lower East Side at a place that doesn't exist anymore. And it was one of those open mikes that wasn't really just for comedy.

I'm sick of the foodies who need every morsel that goes into their mouth to be a Picasso painting, a Giacometti sculpture, a Proust novel, evoking the world with each crumb.

I find it extremely ironic that Bush says that personal opinion should not be a tool in the interpretation of the Constitution, when he's the one who's lobbying for a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. If that doesn't stem from personal opinion, I don't know what does.

My 20s were all about feeling desperate. Desperate to find a new boyfriend. Desperate to get the perfect job. Desperate to get rid of this terrible relationship with this bad new boyfriend.