Sara Levine > Quotes

“...my thoughts don't really bump along this way, but they do bump somehow, and it's more honest--more pedagogically useful, more truthful--to arrange them in a loose, disconnected, provisional way than to deliver only the conclusions.”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“The essay is a modest genre. It doesn't mean to change the world. Instead it says: let me tell you what happened to me.”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“Don't tell me you're reading it,' she said, as if I were doing something to the book, whereas in fact the book was doing something to me.”
― Sara Levine, Treasure Island!!!

“And found there one of those huge comprehensive anthologies of literature, the sort of thing which, on a bad day, can induce an inferiority complex...”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“No doubt he is more than that, but we have no time to inquire.”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“People approach writers, assuming we pull a perfect text out of our nose each time (well spelled). Spelling is the least of it.”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“Grief is a wound that needs attention in order to heal. We can have pancakes.”
― Sara Levine, Treasure Island!!!

“One makes discoveries about oneself but more often one makes up discoveries.”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“BOLDNESS
RESOLUTION
INDEPENDENCE
HORN-BLOWING”
― Sara Levine, Treasure Island!!!

“They are suspicious of humanism, nervous about too much style, and wary of public celebrations of the personal.”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“If life were a sea adventure, I knew: I wouldn't be sailor, pirate, or cabin boy but more likely a barnacle clinging to the side of the boat.”
― Sara Levine, Treasure Island!!!

“I knew very well what Lars meant when he praised me, and held me, and indicated through a caress that he liked me just the way I was; I knew, better than he knew himself, that he wanted to ensure he never be confronted with what, in his own personality, might need pruning or pushing or prodding, that behind every show of support he gave, for me here, for me now, there lurked a terrified refusal to acknowledge his own potential to grow.”
― Sara Levine, Treasure Island!!!

“A painful truth I’d learn later: you may be ready to grow, but you can’t fertilize friends and grow them with you.”
― Sara Levine, Treasure Island!!!

“You do know what I mean about Mom. It's like she radios into headquarters for Dad's feelings when she senses hers need backup.”
― Sara Levine