Chandra > Chandra's Quotes

“Another friend said, I want to write sentences that seem as if no one wrote them. The goal being the creation of a pure delivery system, without the distraction of a style. The goal being a form no one notices, the creation of what seems like pure feeling, not of what seems like a vehicle for a feeling. Language as pure experience, pure memory. I too wanted to achieve that impossible effect.”
― Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness: The End of a Diary

“I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“I annotated my friend's book manuscript with scribbles on every page. She annotated mine with a single note: This needs to be better. She trusted that I would know what to do, and I did.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“You aren't the same person after a good night's sleep as you are after a sleepless night. But which person is you?”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Something was comforting about strangers—it seemed like they would exist forever as the same, unknowable mass.”
― Megan Boyle

“DAYS ARE WEEKS AND WEEKS ARE DAYS INSIDE YOU”
― Blake Butler, There Is No Year

“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, Very Cold People

“They are preparing to go to war, and with so little time to waste, they say what they mean.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.”
― J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

“On winter mornings the light spread like a watery broth over the landscape.”
― Sarah Manguso, Very Cold People

“I am a cage, in search of a bird.”
― Franz Kafka

“I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. ”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I privately say to you, old friend... please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“Outsiders pretend to be insiders, and it makes them unlikable. Insiders pretend to be outsiders, and we love to play along.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“That killed me.”
― J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“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, Very Cold People

“Slowly, slowly, I accumulate sentences. I have no idea what I'm doing until suddenly it reveals itself, almost done.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“It takes time to recover from having run somewhere. But sometimes one just wants to run. Anywhere.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“It isn't so much that geniuses make it look easy; it's that they make it look it fast.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way—I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I knew I couldn't replicate my whole life in language.”
― Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness: The End of a Diary

“Whatever you're feeling, billions already have. Feel for them.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don't know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“When I really worry about something, I don’t just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don’t go. I’m too worried to go. I don’t want to interrupt my worrying to go. ”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“There truly are two kinds of people: you and everyone else.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“I'd never have guessed which people I'd still know by now.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“The trouble was that I failed to record so much , I wrote, but how could I have believed that if I tried hard enough, I could remember everything?”
― Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness: The End of a Diary