Attempting Normal Quotes

“It amazes me that we are all on Twitter and Facebook. By "we" I mean adults. We're adults, right? But emotionally we're a culture of seven-year-olds. Have you ever had that moment when are you updating your status and you realize that every status update is just a variation on a single request: "Would someone please acknowledge me?”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“Everyone is a little bitter. We're born bitter. The personality itself is really just a very complex defense mechanism. A reaction to the first time someone said, "No you can't.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“I was an abusive, selfish, needy, angry asshole.

Now I'm just kind of selfish, a little less angry, occasionally needy, with flights of asshole. I've grown.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“I develop oddly deep emotional connections to people in my life that are one-sided. I may just be a passing character to them. I don't know what that is. I don't know why that is. I can have one encounter with somebody and feel very connected to them and read a lot into that. They become very important people to me, but to them I may just be like, "Oh yeah, we talked that one time, right?" To me it's a live-changing moment that bonded us; to them, it was a five-minute polite chat in passing.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“If you can't afford the good food or if you can't afford health care or if you don't have a job or if your car is dangerous because you can't get it fixed and you DIE, you just lost the game-bzzzzz-thanks for playing extreme capitalism.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“We're all carrying around some shit. When you hear the things people have gone through and realize you've gone through the same, it provides an amazing amount of relief. It give us hope. And I think that's what we're supposed to get from each other. The hope that, maybe, just maybe, we're going to be okay. Maybe.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“That's an animal fable about humility. If you survive your mistake, you must learn from it. Accept that you're fragile, vulnerable, and sometimes stupid. Realize that you're not immortal and you've got to take care of yourself. And then laugh it off and fly away.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“That’s the big challenge of life—to chisel disappointment into wisdom so people respect you and you don’t annoy your friends with your whining.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“The truth is, I can’t read anything with any distance. Every book is a self-help book to me. Just having them makes me feel better.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“Comedians in their infancy are generally selfish, irresponsible, emotionally retarded, morally dubious, substance-addicted animals who live out of boxes and milk crates. They are plagued with feelings of failure and fraudulence. They are prone to fleeting fits of manic grandiosity and are completely dependent on the acceptance and approval of rooms full of strangers, strangers the comedian resents until he feels sufficiently loved and embraced.

Perhaps I am only speaking for myself here.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“it can take twenty years to create an overnight success but what you don’t hear is that that is the exact same amount of time it takes to create a bitter failure.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“Some of you may be perfectly happy with mediocrity. Some of you will get nothing but heartbreak. Some of you will be heralded as geniuses and become huge. Of course, all of you think that one describes you...hence the delusion necessary to push on.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“He doesn't have anything like wisdom of age or hindsight. He's a biased historian of self, an emotional revisionist. We all are, for the most part.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“I was with her for about six years before I asked her to marry me, which only means one thing: I shouldn’t have done it! If you wait six years to get engaged, you are on the fence.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“People don’t talk to each other about real things because they’re afraid of how they’ll be judged. Or”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“In our interview, Conan said something about the secret of his success: “Get yourself in a situation where you have no choice.” And that’s what I’m doing, because I had no choice.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“Imagining the worst has always been a great comfort to me. If there is turbulence there is an imminent crash. If she doesn’t pick up the phone, she is fucking someone. If there is a lump it is a tumor. By thinking like this I protect myself from disappointment. And if anything other than the worst-case scenario unfolds, what a pleasant surprise!”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“Notebooks. There are dozens of notebooks. I always carry notebooks with me. I scribble in them in a barely readable scrawl. I do not write jokes. I write moments. Thoughts. Fragments that I have to sweat over as if they’re cryptic texts in a lost language when I try to interpret them. That shouldn’t be part of my process—decoding my own writing—but it has been for my entire life. What does that say about me? Why can’t I make it easy? I need to complicate everything to protect myself from success and to remain complicated and overwhelmed.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“I don’t hoard, exactly, but I get it. It’s a response to our need and desire for purpose, order, definition, and a fortress. It’s a calling that requires constant management, control, and obsessive attention.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“People who have babies tell me I will know a love that is beyond anything I can imagine, and a joy that is indescribable. Love and joy? That sounds horrifying. I have no way of knowing whether I can handle either of those. I'm much better with need and fear. They are what ground me.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“Why am I holding on to this stuff? Some of this junk is losing its punch. Pictures. Pieces of paper with writing on them—I can no longer connect with the thoughts or feelings that birthed them, that drove me in that panicky desperate moment to scribble in a barely legible scrawl as if on a cave wall. All say the same thing in some form or another: “I am here. This is me in this moment.” Do I have some fantasy that this stuff will be important after I die? Do I think that scholars will be thrilled that I left such a disorganized treasure trove of creative evidence of me? Will the archives be fought over by college libraries? What will probably happen is my brother will come out with my mother and look in the boxes. My mother will hold up a VHS or a cassette and say to my brother, “Do I have a machine that plays these?” My brother will shake his head no and they will throw it all away.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“Most of the books I have are indicators of my insecurity. I really wanted to be an intellectual. I really wanted to understand Sartre. I thought that was what made people smart. I have tried to read Being and Nothingness no fewer than twenty times in my life. I really thought that every answer had to be in that book. Maybe it is. The truth is, I can’t read anything with any distance. Every book is a self-help book to me. Just having them makes me feel better. I underline profusely but I don’t retain much. Reading is like a drug. When I am reading from these books it feels like I am thinking what is being read, and that gives me a rush. That is enough. I glean what I can. I finish some of the unfinished thoughts lingering around in my head by adding the thoughts of geniuses and I build from there. There are bookmarks in most of the denser tomes at around page 20 to 40 because that was where I said, “I get it.” Then I put them back on the shelf.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“Worse than the feeling of loss that comes with a breakup is the feeling of losing. Loss is a state of emotional injury that you can get past; losing is a feeling of humiliation and defeat that stays fresh. The latter causes most of the problems in the world. If there is another man involved, it is almost impossible not to judge yourself as a failure and see him as an enemy.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“People want to share but they usually don’t.
People don’t talk to each other about real things because they’re afraid of how they’ll be judged. Or they think other people don’t have the capacity to carry the burden of what they have to say. They see the compulsion to put that burden out in the world as a show of weakness. But all that stuff is what makes us human; more than that, it’s what makes being human interesting and funny. How we got away from that, I don’t know. But fuck that: We’re built to deal with shit. We’re built to deal with death, disease, failure, struggle, heartbreak, problems. It’s what separates us from the animals and why we envy and love animals so much. We’re aware of it all and have to process it. The way we each handle being human is where all the good stories, jokes, art, wisdom, revelations, and bullshit come from.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“I guess we can start at the end but it’s really the middle. Let’s just call it the really bad part. My second wife, Mishna, brought it to my attention that I had an anger problem. She didn’t say it like that. What she said was, “I’m leaving.” Then she took her vagina and left.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“I was thinking about how temporary disappointment can be if you don’t linger on it too long and how there are beautiful things in the world if you look. It’s up to you to find them for yourself.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“But then again, what do I know. I project. Then I judge.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“There is a weird truth to the idea that if you really don’t care, things will generally go your way. If you’re really invested and emotionally attached, things will get away from you or at least get chaotic and scary.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“What you don’t know about your parents is what becomes fascinating as you get older. They”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“I know compulsive napping sounds like a contradiction in terms but it is not. I also call them panic naps. A panic nap usually comes on with an exacerbated declaration of: “Fuck, I gotta … goddamnit … I can’t think about … shit, I’m tired.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal