Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere

by Maria Bamford

She can squeeze joy out of a customer-service call.

My aspiration

I was at Nickelodeon for one year and I was voted Employee of the Month the same month I got fired.

If you are not “there,” it’s difficult to be a part of anything.

I tell myself that the reason I get work as a comedian is a result of hard work and tenacity (and hundreds of years of privilege, an easy-street childhood, and a shocking amount of luck), but it could genuinely just be because I have a high voice and a clown angel watches over me from clown heaven. That said, I’m going to keep swallowing my pills with a bump of Diet Coke.

We all die. Even if we do a six-week Tapatío cleanse and swim to work.