87 Quotes by Sarah Manguso

I write in defense of the beliefs I fear are least defensible.

Respect the one-hit wonder not for his one hit but for all the days he must have suffered afterward, trying for another.

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

It takes time to recover from having run somewhere. But sometimes one just wants to run. Anywhere.

And then I think I don’t need to write anything down ever again. Nothing’s gone, not really. Everything that’s ever happened has left its little wound.

I knew I couldn’t replicate my whole life in language.

The trouble with letting people see you at your worst isn’t that they’ll remember; it’s that you’ll remember.

I like writing that is unsummarizable, a kernel that cannot be condensed, that must be uttered exactly as it is.

I’ve written whole books in order to avoid writing other books.