I Might Regret This Quotes

“Mediocrity isn’t a part of the successful women’s handbook, but I’m sorry, boys, for you it is. Women have to push harder, jump farther, stay later, think better, shit faster, all while trying their best to maintain whatever society says today their body should look like, how they should parent, what they should wear, when they should find love, what’s inappropriate for them to do, say, be, feel, or fuck. The outward pressures are constant, but the inward congestion of doubts and insecurities are sometimes louder—women really can have it all!”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“That ultimately I’m admitting that I’m scared of being alone. But aren’t we all? Isn’t that… the main thing? Aren’t we all secretly terrified that we’re not understood, not seen, not loved, not wanted? Okay, great, cleared that up.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“The stars out there, out west, are different, they’re brighter and bolder, and they make you feel that the world is so much more than you ever could have thought, that maybe you’d only been focusing on a tiny little corner. I know all those stars are there too, in my New York sky, but I don’t see them. There’s too much in the way. This was the space I was longing for and had been seeking out. But I could see now I hadn’t been yearning for that expanse to escape into, but rather to remember that I was a part of it. Right, the universe. Right, the sky, the stars, the unfathomable mystery of those faraway galaxies. The original, intended purpose for the word awesome. How had I forgotten about all this? It’s all right here.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“I shook my own hand and started the rest of my life with myself anew: I’ll go where I want to go, buy what I want with the money I’ve earned, order whatever takeout I want with disproportionate sodas, do and see what I yearn to experience in the world, even if it means I go alone. If I made those plans for myself without setting any expectation of there being someone beside me, then I could never be disappointed because I was making that choice!”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“Maybe we never fully figure it out. Maybe it keeps changing. Sometimes we’re the swimmer, sometimes the one being swam into.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“I tried to imagine what I might look like from a star's perspective: a tiny person in a grassy field in southern Utah, all by herself. She just stood there in her mismatched pajamas, looking up, so much happening in the world around her. But there she was, awake in the middle of the night, quietly staring away from it all, letting time slow down for a moment.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“The things we are most afraid of are the things that will ultimately change our whole makeup.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“NO" for me now is all about making room for more "YES.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“Some of the best experiences don’t end with a bang, but rather a dose of reality.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“I particularly don’t like when people pretend to know things they don’t, and strongly believe it’s okay to NOT know everything.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“I’m done being polite about this bullshit. My list of professional insecurities entirely stems from being a young woman. Big plot twist there! As much as I like to execute equality instead of discussing the blaring inequality, the latter is still necessary. Everything, everywhere, is still necessary. The more women who take on leadership positions, the more representation of women in power will affect and shift the deep-rooted misogyny of our culture—perhaps erasing a lot of these inherent and inward concerns. But whether a woman is a boss or not isn’t even what I’m talking about—I’m talking about when she is, because even when she manages to climb up to the top, there’s much more to do, much more to change. When a woman is in charge, there are still unspoken ideas, presumptions, and judgments being thrown up into the invisible, terribly lit air in any office or workplace. And I’m a white woman in a leadership position—I can only speak from my point of view. The challenges that women of color face in the workforce are even greater, the hurdles even higher, the pay gap even wider. The ingrained, unconscious bias is even stronger against them. It’s overwhelming to think about the amount of restructuring and realigning we have to do, mentally and physically, to create equality, but it starts with acknowledging the difference, the problem, over and over.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“There’s a quiet epidemic of women taking and absorbing the blame for other people’s mistakes, because of some inherent attribute deep inside us, constantly trying not to be difficult. I’ve had to learn to speak up and ask for what I want, specifically. And if it’s not done right, I don’t need to say, “Sorry, but…” Why am I apologizing? Asking for what you want and need (nicely) is not being an asshole, it’s part of the job.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“The doors that have been shut, the ones I've walked away from, sad, frustrated, and depleted, have always somehow led to the other doors, the ones I didn't see right away, the ones that opened so many others.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“All this is to say, I'm somewhere in between. Everyone is. It's all acceptable and it's all bullshit and it's all powerfully important.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“I thought about how pain is also a symptom of transformation. I thought about bouncing back. How we can start again. And again.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“It truly is a team sport, and we have the best team in town. But it’s my relationship with Ilana that I cherish most. We have such a strong partnership and have learned how we work most efficiently: I need coffee, she needs tea. When we’re stressed, I pace around and use a weird neck massager I bought online that everyone makes fun of me for, and she knits. When we’re writing together she types, because she’s faster and better at grammar. We actually FaceTime when we’re not in the same city and are constantly texting each other ideas for jokes or observations to potentially use (I recently texted her from Asheville: girl with flip-flops tucked into one strap of tank top). Looking back now at over ten years of doing comedy and running a business with her I can see how our collaboration has expanded and contracted. But it’s the problem-solving aspect of this industry, the producing, the strategy, the realizing that we could put our heads together and figure out the best solution, that has made our relationship and friendship what it is. Because that spills into everything. We both have individual careers now, but those other projects have only been motivating and inspiring to each other and the show. We bring back what we’ve learned on the other sets, in the other negotiations, in the other writers’ rooms or press situations. I’m very lucky to have jumped into this with Ilana Rose Glazer, the ballsy, curly-haired, openhearted, nineteen-year-old girl that cracked me up that night at the corner of the bar at McManus. So many wonderful things have happened since we began working together, but there are a lot of confusing, life-altering things in there too, and it’s such a relief to have someone who completely understands the good and the bad.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“When people arrange stuffed animals in the back of their cars, is it for us, or them?”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“The problem with searching is you find everything but the thing you're searching for.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“Real life is like a constant Yelp review, everyone has notes on how the experience could be improved.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“This fucking top sheet. How do people sleep when this top sheet is tucked in so tightly? I can’t even fit my feet under here. Why do they always make it so tight? I guess the bed is supposed to look nice and made when you come in, and then it just gets ruined on a daily basis. What a stupid thing to be annoyed about, the top sheet. People are suffering in the world, everywhere, in terrible ways, and I’m in a hotel bed, annoyed at my fucking top sheet. What an asshole.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“Love revealed how covered up I was, but heartache broke me open.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“It’s weird when things line up like that—a weakness you’ve been working on personally gets shined back at you through someone else’s issue.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“Without her, I probably would have stayed in Brooklyn and got some delicious chocolate chip cookie with salt on top every day, instead of driving across the country. This hypothetical cookie, clearly a real cookie, and one of the best I've ever had) would have satiated me temporarily but I would have stayed put, in all the ways...But because of her, I also end up outside my comfort zone, in unwieldy territory - like falling in love or eating alone at a bed-and-breakfast.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“Women have to push harder, jump farther, stay later, think better, shit faster, all while trying their best to maintain whatever society says today their body should look like, how they should parent, what they should wear, when they should find love, what’s inappropriate for them to do, say, be, feel, or fuck. The outward pressures are constant, but the inward congestion of doubts and insecurities are sometimes louder—women really can have it all!”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“I was almost like Teen Wolf, but instead of when the moon comes out and I turn into a wolf, I’d turn into a wildly depressed person and also be a thirty-three-year-old woman instead of a teen boy.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“From that poorly lit room on the top floor of a tiny mini mall in Sedona, a stranger told me exactly what I knew already. I guess that's what I was looking for, someone to see me and my fears and my flaws. To see all of it and to tell me to not give up. I didn't know I was searching for hope.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“Needing a second opinion This one. I think this is the one women in the workplace are scared of. I know I am. Broad City is a very collaborative environment, and I trust everyone we’ve hired to work with us, so I naturally ask people’s opinions. But when you get a new job, a new assignment, or a promotion, the fear of not being good enough, of not knowing everything can seep in. In the last season of Broad City (4), I directed two episodes. This was a new experience for me, and one I took very seriously. But I found, during the process, that a big insecurity for me is the fear that if I need a second opinion, that means I don’t know what I’m doing. This is false, I do know what I’m doing, but it’s that vulnerability, that want for another set of eyes on my decision that can make me shaky. I ultimately made all the decisions I needed to—after using my resources aka asking questions—but in order to do that, I had to continually let go of this unease that someone from a dark, back corner would pop out, pointing directly at me, yelling about how I’m a fraud for asking for help while in charge. That I’d be plucked up by a huge claw and dropped outside on the sidewalk, banished from taking on this new role. This fear is mindless. Understandable, but stupid. Crews are a team. Any business is a team, and the whole point of having people do different jobs and be experts in their specific department is for them to help in any way they know how. The director isn’t there to bark out orders. They are the conductor bringing everyone’s talents together to execute their own artistic vision. Asking and bouncing ideas off people, and even changing your mind, is allowed. It’s so hard to ever show any sort of weakness, especially when you’re a woman at the top of the project, in a business you never thought you’d actually be able to break into. But going through all the possibilities and asking for help is not weak, it’s smart. I’m going to go ahead and dog-ear this paragraph so even I can come back and remind myself.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

“I feel good about being so kind and forgiving. Maybe this was a lesson—outward appearances aren’t the most important thing. It’s inner beauty that matters. I leave the salon, waving and smiling. They look at me, their eyes all silently say, Wow, what a generous soul, and I wish I could be more like her.”
― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff