Top 120 Sarah Manguso Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Those whose every act is praised are handicapped by adoration. They grow stunted, shrivel up, lose the impulse to continue. Praise can kill.”

— Sarah Manguso

102. “I’m stuck in a waiting room with the TV on the same channel all day, and I’m never called in for my appointment.”

— Sarah Manguso

103. “My friend who runs marathons, throws elaborate parties, sews quilts for everyone she knows, works full-time, and has three children does all of this not in spite of her useless husband but because of him.”

— Sarah Manguso

104. “There are no memories, just artifacts. And they’re all lying.”

— Sarah Manguso

105. “Does the first time matter that much?”

— Sarah Manguso

106. “It’s a self-obliteration that never stops and that no one notices.”

— Sarah Manguso

107. “I hadn’t remembered that in decades. That particular quiet.”

— Sarah Manguso

108. “I suspect competence follows from an ability to believe oneself competent.”

— Sarah Manguso

109. “The full moon is saying ‘O!’ But the sun is silent.”

— Sarah Manguso

110. “I understood things then. Somehow I became confused in the ensuing years.”

— Sarah Manguso

111. “The most fervent kiss of my life was less than five seconds long more than ten years ago with someone else’s husband. It still hasn’t quite worn off.”

— Sarah Manguso

112. “I like to visit with the exhausted girl who once was me.”

— Sarah Manguso

113. “I knew I was grown up when I spent time with them and felt not just the weight of my old memories but the weight of theirs, from when they were children.”

— Sarah Manguso

114. “A woman I knew was so attached to the idea of having a terrible secret, she told me the same secret three times, each time as if for the first time.”

— Sarah Manguso

115. “She died by her own hand, but she was as brave as a soldier before a firing squad. She faced it. Whatever it was, she had been facing it for a long time.”

— Sarah Manguso

116. “They are preparing to go to war, and with so little time to waste, they say what they mean.”

— Sarah Manguso

117. “Worry is impatience for the next horror.”

— Sarah Manguso

118. “I closed my own eyes for a moment and recovered, but incompletely. I can’t forget how close insanity is, how easy it might be to drive off the shoulder of the road into a place where no one would ever find me.”

— Sarah Manguso

119. “Sincerity that pure was impossible to include in my life then, and I had to turn away. It was like looking at the sun.”

— Sarah Manguso

120. “In sports, failure is outwardly observable, which is to say it is a sign – look, there it is, the tennis ball that bounced twice. In the rest of life, failure is mostly complex, nuanced, secret.”

— Sarah Manguso

121. “What fails to kill me will kill me eventually.”

— Sarah Manguso

122. “One of the great solaces of my life is that I no longer need to wonder whether I’ll have children.”

— Sarah Manguso

123. “The will can achieve some things, but one must exhaust one’s will in order to learn which things they are.”

— Sarah Manguso

124. “Not every narrative is an arc. The universe, for example, just keeps expanding.”

— Sarah Manguso

125. “On winter mornings the light spread like a watery broth over the landscape.”

— Sarah Manguso

126. “The affair is over, but at least things have gone somewhere, if only into oblivion. And maybe oblivion is what I wanted all along.”

— Sarah Manguso

127. “Maybe that’s what I should be wishing for instead.”

— Sarah Manguso

128. “I fret about my lost scarf. Then I miss my flight. The scarf is no longer a problem.”

— Sarah Manguso

129. “I go to another room, hoping someone will notice me, but I stay silent out of loyalty or fear.”

— Sarah Manguso

130. “But I’m doing her a favor, letting her escape her suffering into mine.”

— Sarah Manguso

131. “People congregate according to their relative levels of luck.”

— Sarah Manguso

132. “I want to shed my fears one by one until there is nothing left of me.”

— Sarah Manguso

133. “Perfect happiness is the privilege of deciding when things end. But then you have to find a new happiness.”

— Sarah Manguso

134. “With each of his new misfortunes I’m punished further, with secret guilt, for wishing all of it on him, long ago.”

— Sarah Manguso

135. “I’m faced at every moment with two possible lives, and I must choose one without knowing whether I want it, whether it’s worth it.”

— Sarah Manguso

136. “I thought I’d die of it, but I didn’t die. You can learn to eat violence. There is pleasure in not resisting. I dedicated myself to teaching my bully just how much a person can consume.”

— Sarah Manguso