Quotes from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“Because you are defined not by life's imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. And because there is joy in embracing - rather than running from - the utter absurdity of life.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“A friend is someone who knows where all your bodies are buried. Because they're the ones who helped you put them there."
And sometimes, if you're really lucky, they help you dig them back up.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“You should just accept who you are, flaws and all, because if you try to be someone you aren't, then eventually some turkey is going to shit all over your well-crafted facade, so you might as well save yourself the effort and enjoy your zombie books.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“I can finally see that all the terrible parts of my life, the embarrassing parts, the incidents I wanted to pretend never happened, and the things that make me "weird" and "different," were actually the most important parts of my life. They were the parts that made me ME.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“...and whenever I had menstral cramps, I could just pretend that Voldemort was close.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“No really. What exactly did you do today, Jenny? Quantify it for me."
"It's not quantifiable. There aren't even metrics for the shit I do.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“I am the Wizard of Oz of housewives (in that I am both "Great and Terrible" and because I sometimes hide behind the curtains”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“In short? It is exhausting being me. Pretending to be normal is draining and requires amazing amounts of energy and Xanax.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“It's true, I did say I wanted girlfriends," I capitulated hesitantly, "but couldn't we start with something smaller and less terrifying? Like maybe spend a weekend at a crack house? I heard those people are very nonjudgmental, and if you accidentally say something offensive you can just blame it on their hallucinations.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“I try to be appreciative of what I have instead of bitter about what I’ve lost.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“That night I looked up at those same stars, but I didn't want any of those things. I didn't want Egypt, or France, or far-flung destinations. I just wanted to go back to my life from my childhood, just to visit it, and touch it, and to convince myself that yes, it had been real.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“If someone asked me to pick out my own vagina’s mug shot out of a lineup of vaginas, I’d be helpless. And probably concerned about what exactly my vagina had been doing that constituted a need for its own mug shot.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“...I just want to clarify that I don't mean 'without my vagina' like I didn't have it with me at the time. I just mean that I wasn't, you know...displaying it while I was at Starbucks. That's probably understood, but I thought I should clarify, since it's the first chapter and you don't know that much about me. So just to clarify, I always have my vagina with me. It's like my American Express card. (In that I don't leave home without it. Not that I use it to buy stuff with.)”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“But really, what else are you going to talk about in line at the liquor store? Childhood trauma seems like the natural choice, since it’s the reason why most of us are in line there to begin with.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“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.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“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.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“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.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“Then I yelled through his door, "It's an anniversary gift for you, asshole. Two whole weeks early. FIFTEEN YEARS IS BIG METAL CHICKENS.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“High School Is Life’s Way of Giving You a Record Low to Judge the Rest of Your Life By)”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“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.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“I'm pretty sure 'ferral cats' is code for 'vampire cougars.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“I know other people who are like me... They are brilliant and amazing and forever broken. I'm lucky that although Victor doesn't understand it, he tries to understand, telling me, "Relax. There's absolutely nothing to panic about." I smile gratefully at him and pretend that's all I needed to hear and that this is just a silly phase that will pass one day. I know there's nothing to panic about. And that's exactly what makes it so much worse.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“...pretty much everyone hates high school. It's a measure of your humanity, I suspect. If you enjoyed high school, you were probably a psychopath or a cheerleader. Or possibly both. Those things aren't mutually exclusive, you know. I've tried to block out the memory of my high school years, but no matter how hard you try, it's always with you, like an unwanted hitchhiker. Or herpes. I assume...”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“When Hailey was born my first thought was that I needed a drink and that hospitals should have bars in them.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“No," I replied testily. "I'm pretty sure 'digital' is Latin for 'fingeral,' so finger cancer equals digital cancer. This is all basic anatomy, Dr. Roland." The Dr. Roland told me that he thought I was overreacting, and the "fingeral" wasn't even a real word. Then I told him that I though he was underreacting, probably because he's embarrassed that he doesn't know how Latin works. Then he claimed that "underrecating" isn't a word either. The man has a terrible bedside manner.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“One ox, two oxen. One fox, two foxen.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“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.
And also he'd be a duke.
And possibly my stepbrother.
Then one of us would get stabbed with a broken whiskey bottle and/or raped.
Turns out the only part I was right about was that one of us was going to get stabbed.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“I've found, though, that people are more likely to share their personal experiences if you go first, so that's why I always keep an eleven-point list of what went wrong in my childhood to share with them. Also I usually crack open a bottle of tequila to share with them, because alcohol makes me less nervous, and also because I'm from the South, and in Texas we offer drinks to strangers even when we're waiting in line at the liquor store. In Texas we call that '_southern hospitality_.' The people who own the liquor store call it 'shoplifting.' Probably because they're Yankees.

I'm not allowed to go back to that liquor store.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“If I'd have been thinking I would have left some Woolite and my delicates by the sink for him to rinse out, but you never think to turn your pet raccoon into a tiny butler until it's too late.”
― Jenny Lawson, quote from Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

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“Night lay upon the forest. There was no moon, but the stars of Silverpelt shed their frosty glitter over the trees. At the bottom of a rocky hollow, a pool reflected the starshine. The air was heavy with the scents of late greenleaf. Wind sighed softly through the trees and ruffled the quiet surface of the pool. At the top of the hollow, the fronds of bracken parted to reveal a cat; her bluish grey fur glimmered as she stepped delicately from rock to rock, down to the water’s edge. Sitting on a flat stone that jutted out over the pool, she raised her head to look around. As if at a signal, more cats began to appear, slipping into the hollow from every direction. They padded down to sit as close to the water as they could, until the lower slopes were filled with lithe shapes gazing down into the pool.”
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“When I ask Kim what a capitalist is, he tells me it is someone who is from the city. He says the Khmer Rouge government views science, technology, and anything mechanical as evil and therefore must be destroyed. The Angkar says the ownership of cars and electronics such as watches, clocks, and televisions created a deep class division between the rich and the poor. This allowed the urban rich to flaunt their wealth while the rural poor struggled to feed and clothe their families. These devices have been imported from foreign countries and thus are contaminated. Imports are defined as evil because they allowed foreign countries a way to invade Cambodia, not just physically but also culturally. So now these goods are abolished. Only trucks are allowed to operate, to relocate people and carry weapons to silence any voices of dissent against the Angkar.”
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