Sarah Manguso Quotes

• Those who claim to write about something larger and more significant than the self sometimes fail to comprehend the dimensions of self.

  Sarah Manguso

  Writing, Self, Dimensions

  Sarah Manguso (2011). “The Two Kinds of Decay”, p.183, Granta

  48 Copy quote

• You can't learn from remembering. You can't learn from guessing. You can learn only from moving forward at the rate you are moved, as brightness into brightness.

  Sarah Manguso

  Moving, Guessing, Brightness

  Sarah Manguso (2009). “The Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir”, p.191, Macmillan

  12 Copy quote

• If you think something's happened quickly, you're looking at only a part of it.

  Sarah Manguso

  Thinking, Happened, Ifs

  Sarah Manguso (2011). “The Two Kinds of Decay”, p.182, Granta

  14 Copy quote

• Time punishes us by taking everything, but it also saves us - by taking everything

  Sarah Manguso

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• Around you move many seas. It is impossible not to drown a little.

  Sarah Manguso

  Moving, Sea, Littles

  Sarah Manguso (2002). “The Captain Lands in Paradise: Poems”

  15 Copy quote

• Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments - an inability to accept life as ongoing.

  Sarah Manguso

  Anxiety, Inability, Ongoing

  "Ongoingness: The End of a Diary". Book by Sarah Manguso, March 03, 2015.

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• The more you talk about something, the less accurate it gets.

  Sarah Manguso

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• This is suffering's lesson: pay attention. The important part might come in a form you do not recognize.

  Sarah Manguso

  Suffering, Important, Attention

  Sarah Manguso (2011). “The Two Kinds of Decay”, p.183, Granta

  6 Copy quote

• The only thing I've consistently been interested in in the last twenty-five years is writing very short texts. That continues to interest me as a project, to contain some part of reality, which is chaotic by definition, in a contained space. I like small apartments. I like getting rid of stuff. I went through my files yesterday and spent hours shredding things. It was great.

  Sarah Manguso

  Writing, Reality, Hours

  5 Copy quote

• Experience in itself wasn’t enough. The diary was my defense against waking up at the end of my life and realizing I’d missed it.

  Sarah Manguso

  Defense, Diaries, Wake Up

  "Ongoingness: The End of a Diary". Book by Sarah Manguso, www.theatlantic.com. March 3, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

• The catalog of emotion that disappears when someone dies, and the degree to which we rely on a few people to record something of what life was to them, is almost too much to bear.

  Sarah Manguso

  People, Degrees, Records

  "Sarah Manguso: 'My diary-keeping is a vice'" by Michelle Dean, www.theguardian.com. March 4, 2015.

  9 Copy quote

• I like people who possess either deep mastery or deep empathy, but not as much as I like those who possess both.

  Sarah Manguso

  People, Empathy, Mastery

  Sarah Manguso (2012). “The Guardians: An Elegy”, p.37, Granta Books

  5 Copy quote

• The best thing about time passing is the privilege of running out of it, of watching the wave of mortality break over me and everyone I know.

  Sarah Manguso

  Running, Privilege, Time Passing

  6 Copy quote

• My existence shrank from an arrow of light pointing into the future forever to a speck of light that was the present moment. I got better at living in that point of light, making the world into that point. I paid close attention to it. I loved it very much.

  Sarah Manguso

  Arrows, Light, Forever

  Sarah Manguso (2011). “The Two Kinds of Decay”, p.165, Granta

  7 Copy quote

• Chair or no chair: a binary relation. But the vicissitudes of moving the body around are infinite. You never know what a person in a chair can do.

  Sarah Manguso

  Moving, Body, Infinite

  Sarah Manguso (2011). “The Two Kinds of Decay”, p.49, Granta

  14 Copy quote

• Look at me, dancing my little dance for a few moments against the background of eternity.

  Sarah Manguso

  Dancing, Looks, Littles

  4 Copy quote

• I see no reason not to write whatever comes to me.

  Sarah Manguso

  Writing, Reason

  4 Copy quote

• I don't write toward a genre, and I try not to make claim to a genre after a book is published. That said, The Guardians isn't poetry. It's prose.

  Sarah Manguso

  Book, Writing, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• If I'm not writing a thing, depression might be looming.

  Sarah Manguso

  Writing

  4 Copy quote

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