Jenny Slate Quotes

For some reason, I never watched Lifetime but just discovered it. I was like, 'Oh, it's all rom-coms!' ~ Jenny Slate

I think that, unfortunately, people who are maybe threatened by feminism think that it's about setting your bra on fire and being aggressive, and I think that's really wrong and really dangerous. ~ Jenny Slate

You are dear to yourself in the morning and it is the morning now. It is very private to have such a love for yourself. Closer, closer to the curtain. How funny, your face is right right against the curtain now. How funny to know what side of it you are on! You are asleep! How wonderful to pay attention. ~ Jenny Slate

The super-ego is reiterative. It repeats the most boring, pointy, hurtful things, and if you met it at a party, if it were a person, you would think that the person was not only mean and insane, but also not as smart as they think they are. You wouldn't listen. You would think they were a shithead. ~ Jenny Slate

So now there is not even anyone to dream about, and what an odd feeling. I don't have the strength to put together the features of a fantasy face. I am heartbroken over no one, over having nobody to wish for, nobody to hope for. I am heartbroken, usually, over someone. Now I am heartbroken over no one ~ Jenny Slate

I don't have any horror stories of trying to start as a comedian and eating it constantly on stage. ~ Jenny Slate

It is a certain type of person who feels this way that I feel, and I'm proud to be one, and now I see that I must really not forget that the style of what I find beautiful is incredible to me, that it is incredible to feel lucky to want to want what one wants, to be able to see the rings of yourself this way. ~ Jenny Slate

I loved pretending to be a middle-aged Jewish woman. I just wanted to do what I saw Gilda Radner and Carol Burnett doing. But I'm not a particularly good impressionist. It was never my strong suit. ~ Jenny Slate

I'm stuck here in a cycle and I am getting older but I am not growing up and my heart is getting soft dark spots on it like a fruit that has gone bad or is soft because too many hands have squeezed it but then put it back down not because I am not ready but because they were not ready for my type of fruity flesh. I felt so ripe and sweet - what was off? The truth is, I was forcing myself into people's mouths. I jumped out of their hands and into their mouths and I yelled EAT ME way before they even had a chance to get hungry and notice me and lift me up. ~ Jenny Slate

Women love to be asked more about their clothes than their work. We're dolls; we made a wish to become alive. ~ Jenny Slate

I've only been acting since 2009 and I learn more and more with each job. I think I prepare and I'm very focused and I have a good work ethic that I learned in school. ~ Jenny Slate

For a while I would have trench-times, when everything felt like blank paper, and I couldn't feel anyone's heart pointed even in my direction, let alone anyone loving me or wanting me to be around. Very boring, very lonely, very tired, again. It was hard to feel anything except "I am not one of the creatures who will experience anything precious. ~ Jenny Slate

Using creative expression as a means to a professional end makes me curl up a bit. ~ Jenny Slate

I learned my lesson early in my career that it's not helpful to go and look at what other people's opinions are. ~ Jenny Slate

We love rom-coms, but it's getting to where we don't identify with any of the women in them. ~ Jenny Slate

I want to keep growing and I want to be an actress for as long as I can. ~ Jenny Slate

I think the main thing that affected my comedy was that my dad slept in a nightgown for most of my childhood. And it was just very funny every single night and made me realize that laughter is fun and nightgowns are cool. ~ Jenny Slate

I've always wanted to play a normal woman, and I think I have been offered these parts where I play a kook because I'm not the idea of what a normal woman is. ~ Jenny Slate

I spend so much time hoping things for myself. ~ Jenny Slate

I always thought that farts were funny, and I always thought that they were mine to talk about because they came out of my body. ~ Jenny Slate

I would go so far as to say I would not have the life that I have right now if it wasn't for Gabe Liedman. He is the first person I met in my adulthood that I felt was truly delighted by me and understood me and also was curious about me. ~ Jenny Slate

I am a plant and I have a fragile green stem and my flower is still in the pod on the top of the stalk, unopened, when the dawn strolls in over the horizon. My blossom spreads out during the day and it goes into the pod at night and then it goes again the next day and all of the days. ~ Jenny Slate

You don't realize it until you go out and take a look, but there are so many ways in which sexism is just allowed in our culture, not just in the entertainment industry. It's just allowed to be there, and that's not acceptable anymore. And I think it's really important to be very vocal. ~ Jenny Slate

I don't like taking physical risks at all. I take a lot of emotional risks, and I don't feel like I need to get on a bike or a horse or jump off of anything ever. ~ Jenny Slate

It makes a lot of sense to me that I would be a cartoon. I feel like a cartoon as a person. I really, really do. ~ Jenny Slate

A psychic recently looked right into the eternal cosmos and then returned to me with this elegant yet cryptic message: Grow up. ~ Jenny Slate

I think, in general, finding the right time to have a baby is pretty scary. ~ Jenny Slate

Look! Look at this woman who is both the emergency and the relief. Let me be both (I have no choice). Give in. Fall apart. Look at the pieces. Reassemble. This is the essential movement of my holy flux. ~ Jenny Slate

I have things I say over and over again, for sure, but I've never wanted to make an album or really go on the road. I don't want any traction. I just want to be able to express myself and to feel love. ~ Jenny Slate

I love waking up in the morning. It makes me feel really excited. ~ Jenny Slate

I am tired of sinking down to a lower place to be with men. I am tired of throwing a tarp over some of my personality so that the shape of my identity suits some gross man a little better for whatever shitty things he needs to do in order to keep his boring identity erect and supreme. ~ Jenny Slate

It's 2014, and the fact that anybody has to fight for the right to do what they want to do with their body in a safe and responsible way is infuriating. ~ Jenny Slate

This is what makes my mother my mother. She loves the flower and she wants me to know this flower, but she will only smell it once, and then give it to me for unlimited sniffing pleasure and she will be happy about it all. ~ Jenny Slate

I tend to be really spacey, but I don't think it's because I'm unintelligent - it's just my imagination and a little bit of ADD. ~ Jenny Slate

I'm tired of someone being called 'quirky' because they tripped or got a stain on their shirt. It's like a beautiful blonde lady who's quirky because she has bedhead, or she's quirky because she sometimes says the wrong, cute thing. I like it when women are quirky as human beings. ~ Jenny Slate

even when I am happy, it sometimes happens that the slightest things can tip me into nonspecific sadness when I am alone. ~ Jenny Slate

A woman who is not ready to have a baby making it work is not a happy ending to me. It's a personal nightmare. ~ Jenny Slate

What am I supposed to do with this memory now? I know that the wise answer is that I should let it be, but there's so much shame in having a bright, hopeful start and a heavy, lead-footed, choked-up end. I want to put this moment forth like a picture that you slide across the table and you say, "This was this. I was here." When your life breaks apart it's hard to know if you are allowed to keep little pieces that are still nice-looking, or if you have to crush them up in order to move on. Do I have to ruin everything that survived the blast in order to accept that the blast occurred? That seems like a bit too much. Do we have to live with shards, carry them around, have new little cuts all the time? Or can these moments be rounded and just left floating in the attic of a nice old beach house, the one I don't live in yet, the one where I will live when I am old, the oldest person on the planet, the softest crone. When I asked my father this question, "What am I supposed to do with this moment now?" he told me to be unashamed while mentioning it, and to consider the idea that some people stay with you in a group, while others drift away. But the reliving of that moment causes me sharp pain, and I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it and my guess is that I'm not, because of the damage I will do or reveal within myself. ~ Jenny Slate

I'm not one to wallow, but I am one to feel the sting of a slap for a while, I think. ~ Jenny Slate

The women were new friends but I loved them in a massive way. The love was like a large trove of devotion that could only be amassed over time, but it had arrived all at once. The way I loved them felt like it was from long ago. ~ Jenny Slate

Not often is there as much of a vulnerable side as there is a funny side. ~ Jenny Slate

I am supposed to be touched. I can't wait to find the person who will come into the kitchen just to smell my neck and get behind me and hug me and breathe me in and make me turn around and make me kiss his face and put my hands in his hair even with my soapy dishwater drips. I am a lovely woman. Who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me? ~ Jenny Slate

I have a big thing about needing to know that I belong - in my group of friends, in my family, in my industry. ~ Jenny Slate

Sometimes I enact destruction just to reenact my faith that things can be built up again. But I'm trying to stop the first part of that and just have the faith. ~ Jenny Slate

It's exciting to play someone who is a bit tougher than I am. I liked feeling those adjustments. ~ Jenny Slate

I think I've come to terms with the fact that there will always be a ribbon of loneliness running through who I am. ~ Jenny Slate

Comedy can be a little brutal, but not in a satisfying way. ~ Jenny Slate

I couldn't wait to be an adult woman, and I'm glad I felt that way as a kid because, when I grew up, I realised I live in a world where the female form is really disrespected, and society is often trying to wrestle the female form into a shape that looks more like a young boy. ~ Jenny Slate

I'm usually a fairly harsh critic. It depends. I tend to really not watch my work, because I just feel uncomfortable, and I can be highly critical. ~ Jenny Slate

I tend to watch things that aren't really the genre of my own work. ~ Jenny Slate

I sometimes think my earnestness is confused for stupidity, but it shouldn't be. ~ Jenny Slate

TV can be fairly rigid. I've done enough Network TV to know that it's fun but if I have to go somewhere every day maybe it's not the most satisfying [job]. ~ Jenny Slate

If you make a careless choice, you can really ruin things and it can take awhile for them to repair. ~ Jenny Slate

It's important to say that it's not just men that can be man-children. Women can be grown-up women and still have the playfulness of people who are younger. ~ Jenny Slate

I had some friends that went to this hypnotist to stop smoking, and I kind of love things that seem magical. And I liked that it was in Santa Monica, and I had to go near the ocean to get my brain washed out or whatever. So I went there. And I went on a Thursday, and I got hypnotized. ~ Jenny Slate

And even though my head was on backwards and my brain felt, you know, not at its best, I was still aware that two very bad choices were being shoved at me: Tell him that he's right or at least on the right track and therefore lie and also abandon myself and cause more damage by letting his ignorance and monologue go on forever, or tell him NO, he is not even close to correct, that the fact that he is pontificating and instructing and not actually conversing is a sign that he does not even remotely understand. But then after saying that I would have to weather the storm of his humiliation and frustration, and somehow end up feeling bad about myself, like I should have been gentler and treated him like a child who simply doesn't know any better. ~ Jenny Slate

As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid someone else will erase me by denying me love. ~ Jenny Slate

I think it's important to not just speak to like-minded people. ~ Jenny Slate

You have to be really careful to watch out for the difference between banding together, and being grouped together by people who don't understand you. ~ Jenny Slate

Don't think twice. If it's a character that you feel compelled to play and story that you feel needs to be told, don't think twice. ~ Jenny Slate

It's not good for me to see things while they're being edited. I can be highly critical, so I try to stay away. ~ Jenny Slate

They were part of a forest, an ecosystem that is perfect because of its wide variety of species, dominant because nothing is not allowed to be there. In the forest, everything that is inclined to thrive really does, and has a job, and some jobs are to grow things up and some jobs are to take things apart and everything is accepted because there is no notion - among bacteria and moss and busy mice - there is no notion of who deserves to do something or be in a place. There are only lives to be lived, and they are everywhere. ~ Jenny Slate

There's so much interference, so much static and people's voices talking about what you do and why you do it that I've learned to be like, 'No, no.' It's actually simple. I just do this. ~ Jenny Slate

I grew up idolizing Madeline Kahn and Lily Tomlin and Carol Burnett, Ruth Gordon, Rosalind Russell, Amy Irving, women who were stylish and real actresses who did real work and could not be replaced with anyone else. You cannot cast anyone else in Madeline Kahn's roles. ~ Jenny Slate

I've called myself an accidental activist because I came to it not on purpose. ~ Jenny Slate

I'm competitive and I have a messy purse, but otherwise, I like people to think I'm a winner. ~ Jenny Slate

It occurs to me, even as I'm not sure what's left of me, that I can use what is still alive to really behave in a way that I admire. ~ Jenny Slate

I think, from a really early age, I just wanted to be an actress. And I ended up doing comedy because it was the thing that kind of, like, came out of my nature the most easily. But, I've always wanted to do as many different kinds of performances - whatever I could. ~ Jenny Slate

But back to the sea captain and his broken heart. I somehow always felt that this was my story as well. Maybe because I was so obsessed with what it would feel like to one day fall in love, to have another person who loved you the most, and loved you so much, voluntarily, that it became involuntary. ~ Jenny Slate

Life has been so discouraging that I have forgotten why and how to fantasize, and I feel weak. ~ Jenny Slate

I guess some people want to be performers because they want to be famous. ~ Jenny Slate

I really like to cook and have dinner parties and I like to clean, it really clears my head and it makes me feel good to keep my home as a comfortable place. ~ Jenny Slate

I feel I have to be totally cemented in my position, all: 'You can't tell me what to do with my body', but there is another part of me that is, you know, myself: vulnerable, with lots of doubts. ~ Jenny Slate

I just left wishing that it was longer because I enjoyed it so thoroughly. ~ Jenny Slate

Each time I fall in love I feel fear that the world won't let me be in the world with it, that I either have to pick the world or the love. ~ Jenny Slate

I learned that I was able to focus. I've always thought of myself as somebody who is like either it's there or it isn't there. I really worked at this, and I focused, and I was able to replace self-doubt with focus. That was something new for me to say self-doubt is there, but it does not need to be in the front row. You can ask it to take a back seat and replace that front row seat with focus. ~ Jenny Slate

It looks like I'm just gonna keep getting really, really happy and sad and embarrassed and excited and disappointed for the rest of my life, so let's just do that. ~ Jenny Slate

I always loved to sing and was very, very loud. I wanted to be a movie star, like Judy Garland. ~ Jenny Slate

I think sometimes in comedy the characters are often sacrificed for the joke, and it's more important for it to be funny than for there to be love. ~ Jenny Slate

There are so many different stories. You can choose to tell them, or not, but they certainly have the right to exist ~ Jenny Slate

A lot of times what's satisfying to me in comedy is when a woman successfully does self-care. ~ Jenny Slate

Don't use a pick-up line. ~ Jenny Slate

I want to write a studio movie, but probably one that's for me to be in. ~ Jenny Slate

Your feelings of joy are not fake if you are having them! You are allowed to feel joy about sitting on the lap of a dog in a dream, and taking a ride in a van with open windows and sharing a seatbelt. God dammit, this is a gift from your fucking soul! Self-generate, don't you see? Break the trap break the trap break the trap leave the trench! ~ Jenny Slate

If I'm not the best aunt in America, then I don't know what's going on. ~ Jenny Slate

I know sometimes my Twitter feed is intense, but I take it as a friendly void to scream into. I don't have another way to be. ~ Jenny Slate

I want to look out a window at something bright and wide, and at that point accept my nature and understand my intended use and have a clean shirt and clean hands and feel similar to a small planet. ~ Jenny Slate

You're always putting yourself into your work. There's no separation; it's just how you use yourself and transform. ~ Jenny Slate

I hope that the restaurant I go to will have buffalo chicken fingers. I hope that one day I can work with Matt Damon. I have big and little dreams, and they're all equally important to me. A life without buffalo chicken fingers, I don't know if I would want that life. Even if it meant I got to work with Matt Damon. Everything has its worth. ~ Jenny Slate

I really like working. I can't think of a job I didn't like. I was in an Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, which is not my idea of folk art; but I really enjoyed making it, and everyone was really nice. ~ Jenny Slate

I like dressing like I'm going on a date when I'm on stage. ~ Jenny Slate

I don't make a lot of mistakes, honestly. I'm an A-student, I'm an Ivy Leaguer. I need those things. ~ Jenny Slate

My baseline function is I'm usually really happy and optimistic. I think I really genuinely like being alive, and I've got a spring in my step - that's what I've been like all my life. ~ Jenny Slate

I have no regrets. The best thing to happen to me was for Lorne Michaels to hire me and fire me. ~ Jenny Slate

I do think that character types trend. As a female comedian, the parts that come my way are often terrible women. ~ Jenny Slate

If you're in a good marriage, you have the sense that it won't be forever. ~ Jenny Slate

'Obvious Child,' the short, had a nice life online and a great festival run, but the short and the feature still stand apart from everything else I've done. I play a woman who you might meet in life. My other work is much more heightened. ~ Jenny Slate

When I'm on stage, and when I'm comfortable or uncomfortable, I have sort of a knee-jerk reaction to try to make people laugh. It's my version of a handshake to show that I want to make a connection and to show what I'm truly like. It's kind of my statement like, "This is what I'm really like. I'd like you to love me." ~ Jenny Slate

If I'm going to have baked goods in the morning, the rule is that I have to make them myself. ~ Jenny Slate

There was a while when I got really bad stage fright and I basically felt ... I was incredibly angry. I felt like everything had been taken away from me and it was at that point that I realized how much doing stand up reminds me of my self love and curiosity about myself and love of other people because I don't go on stage to dominate. ~ Jenny Slate