I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself Quotes

“There will always be people in life who tell you no and sometimes it’s because they have nothing else to do that day except exert their power, and if you let their no stop you, you’ve just validated their opinion of you as worth more than your own. I”
― Jen Kirkman, I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction

“At least I knew that if someone broke in the alarm was so annoying that he would immediately leave. It's like how I feel when I walk into a store in December and that awful Paul McCartney song 'Wonderful Christmastime' is playing. Not worth it. I'm out of here even though I could have finished all my holiday shopping in one place.”
― Jen Kirkman, I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction

“There will always be people in life who tell you no and sometimes it’s because they have nothing else to do that day except exert their power, and if you let their no stop you, you’ve just validated their opinion of you as worth more than your own.”
― Jen Kirkman, I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction

“What I'm worried about is that I'm not likeable. Why do I need to be liked by people whom I don't like? I like me, which should be enough. But I have to be honest, sometimes that doesn't feel like enough. I'm kind of an asshole sometimes. But I'm gong to stick by my side. That's how selfless I am.”
― Jen Kirkman, I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction

“He couldn't stand seeing me take all these 'Single Woman Sees Australia Alone' day trips. It was pathetic enough I had gone on a crocodile tour and gleefully shrieked in a boat by myself while the families in other boats bonded over seeing these great reptiles lunge out of the water to snatch a chicken in their jaws.”
― Jen Kirkman, I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction

“Max told me where to meet him and I got a little lost on the way there. I had to stop in a pastry shop to ask directions. The cashier tried to help me by showing me a map. I had to explain to him that I really don't know how to comprehend maps. I know that's not an acceptable attribute. I'm working on it. Actually I'm not working on it but it's on my list of things to figure out how to do--right after 'figure out the meaning of life.”
― Jen Kirkman, I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction

“Attention, couples! No one but other couples wants to come over to your house for dinner. That's fine and dandy that you love cooking. Cook your face off. But I'm not in the marriage with you so I find it snug--but not in the good 'as a bug in a rug' way. When single people sit at your dining room table with you and your spouse we feel like your kid--the one you're secretly disappointed in for still living at home at age forty.”
― Jen Kirkman, I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction

“I guess heavy plays were more engrossing when I was an angst-ridden fourteen-year-old whose only options for things to do were to write in my journal in my bedroom, listen to records in my bedroom, and just basically not leave my bedroom.”
― Jen Kirkman, I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction

“I was at the Duke of York's Theatre with a great aisle seat, happy that champagne was allowed inside the auditorium. In America, ladies have to chug chardonnay and do white wine spritzer funnels during intermission in some of the lobbies on Broadway.”
― Jen Kirkman, I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction

“If I keep on living alone, I will probably die in this condo. I'll definitely hit my head on the tub someday and then three days later a cat will eat my face. I don't have a cat, but when a single woman dies alone I hear that cats magically appear.”
― Jen Kirkman, I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction

“A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet vagrancy is a deliverance, and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick and bundle and get out. —ISABELLE EBERHARDT, EXPLORER”
― Jen Kirkman, I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction