Maggie Rowe

“There was a verse that said if you are lukewarm rather than hot or cold, God will spit you out of his mouth on Judgment Day. And I felt like, I mean, I don't know. I'm lukewarm.”

“I've been able to sell a number of pilots. Most have been based on my personal experience, so basically, my pitches have been like 'Sit-'n-Spin' pieces.”

“I want to have my desperate need for personal success shrunk, not enlarged.”

“I continued to suffer from anxiety and obsessive thoughts, although the thoughts stopped centering on hell. I moved into an ashram called the Himalayan Institute after college and studied meditation, which made an enormous difference.”

“Using phrases or mantras to encourage and comfort myself has been a powerful practice for me. For years, I would say to myself 'Remember the purple sky' when I was feeling anxious, which to me meant remember a sense of internal spaciousness and kindness toward myself.”

“Today, I regularly attend two Buddhist organizations, the Zen Center of Los Angeles and Against the Stream, but I also attend certain Christian functions. I try to cultivate a generous, kind spirit and am open to anything to help get me there.”

“The term 'personal ambition' immediately puts me off. It feels like finding a sliver of onion in my ice cream. There's nothing wrong with a sliver of onion, but I don't want it in my ice cream.”

“My parents were wonderful Christians. They were religious, but they were not fanatical in any way. I was the one who took it to the extreme. I was told in Sunday school that you had to accept Jesus into your heart if you didn't want to go to hell. So of course I did that a thousand times. But the catch was you had to mean it with all of your heart.”

“I'm not on fire for the Lord, so I tried to make myself generate this fire for the Lord.”

“My spiritual evolution I would describe as journey from literalism to figuratism. I now see all religious texts as pointing to an ineffable truth.”

“I know career motivation and encouragement up the ladder of success have their place in the world. But I don't want them anywhere near my spirituality.”

“The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral - whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love? I want to foster eulogy virtues when I'm in a yoga class or meditation session or any spiritual gathering. Especially if I'm lying in corpse pose. It just makes sense.”

“When I went to college, I was so focused on this new experience of my life that I really just pushed down all of my fears of hell and damnation.”

“In high school and college, I did not have any Christian friends except my best friend Sarah, who I actually 'brought to Jesus.'”

“'Pyrapshere' began as a sketch for a variety show I produced called 'A Pretty Good Show.' My partner, Andersen Gabrych, and I expanded it into a full-fledged faux-religion, including a list of 21 tenets, sacred symbols, testimonials, and even a clothing line. Many people believed it was a real thing and wanted to join.”

“I have slavishly dedicated myself to the construction of an image that nobody but me sees. Nobody but me is pondering the question: How does Maggie Rowe stack up against others as an overall human being?”

“How is Maggie Rowe compensating for her decision to not have a child? Is what she is doing instead enough to justify that decision? What is she doing instead, and why can't she be better at it? What's keeping her from getting a better overall existence score in comparison to an arbitrary sampling of other human beings?”