Liars Quotes

“I was in charge of everything and in control of nothing.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“Calling a woman crazy is a man's last resort when he's failed to control her.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“Why are you so angry? My husband frequently asked me why I was so much angrier than other women. It always made me smile. I was exactly as angry as every other woman I knew. It wasn’t that we’d been born angry; we’d become women and ended up angry.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“But dying alone, cradled by the universe, continuous with the rest of its energy, wasn’t something I dreaded anymore. Worse things had already happened.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“John had taught me a lesson that felt indelible: that there are no assurances. That anyone might do anything to anyone.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“A husband might be nothing but a bottomless pit of entitlement. You can throw all your love and energy and attention down into it and the hole will never fill. ”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“He thought he could talk me out of things I remembered.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“He sounded as if he’d do anything to save our marriage—anything but curtailing his arrogance or going to a single session of individual or marital therapy or apologizing for anything ever.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“John and I both caught the child’s cold. John stayed in bed for two days; I took the new kitten to the vet and bought groceries and did dishes and laundry and planned all the meals and took the child to school and so on. I took one nap but otherwise kept everything up. And that is a mother’s cold.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“John didn’t just need to win the fight; he needed me to agree that it was my responsibility never to say anything that might make him feel as if he’d ever done anything wrong. Feeling that he’d done something wrong really threatened his sense of entitlement.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“You were already living quite capably without any input from him, and in fact while being actively sabotaged constantly.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have such a happy family. It wasn’t happiness; it was the temporary cessation of pain. But I wouldn’t know that for another seven years.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“A nuclear family can destroy a woman artist. I'd always known that. But I'd never suspected how easily I'd fall into one anyway.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“Calling a woman crazy is a man’s last resort when he’s failed to control her.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“But qualified women aren’t likable; likable women aren’t qualified. The only way to get the job is to be ten times better than the best man and likable, which means willing to absorb any amount of misogyny in any form from anyone with a smile on your face, forever. You must be attractive but not too attractive; men don’t want to look at an unattractive woman all day long, but they won’t feel comfortable working with a woman much more attractive than their own wives. If you marry a man or have children you will automatically be perceived as not committed enough to the job, while married men with children will be perceived as even more committed, with the assumption that their wives will manage all domestic responsibilities, including child-rearing. Finally, assume no allies, since the other women are competing with you for the few token positions available, and once you get the job, men will be free to harass and assault you with no risk of reprisal. Living on this knife edge will ruin your health, and once that happens they’ll be able to fire you and hire a man to do the job you couldn’t quite manage.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“Why are you so angry? My husband frequently asked me why I was so much angrier than other women. It always made me smile. I was exactly as angry as every other woman I knew. It wasn’t that we’d been born angry; we’d become women and ended up angry. Anger is one of the last privileges of the truly helpless. Infants are angry. Have you ever sat all night holding a baby in the dark who’s screaming right into your face? It changes you, or so my husband used to say. He’d done that one night, sat and been screamed at. I was sitting right next to him, but he always told the story as if he’d been the only one there. All the other days and nights, it had just been me. But that one night had been the real game-changer, apparently. My mother told me I’d been such a happy child. You loved everything, she said. I became angry early, though. I was precocious. I pitied men for having to stay the same all their lives, for missing out on this consuming rage.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“I began to understand what a story is. It’s a manipulation. It’s a way of containing unmanageable chaos.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“On day three of our broken family I felt buoyed by love, so much more than I had in my marriage.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“Dishes. Laundry. Cooking. I planned the day and mapped routes to a café, a beach hike, and seals. I made a grocery list, went shopping, drove home, and put everything away. I was a mother on vacation.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“The purpose of marriage was to get stuck, I thought, so that one was forced to fix the marriage in lieu of leaving.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“I wondered whether we could return to the behavior of the beginning, when all we’d done was try to find ways to be kind to each other.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“The child and I played inside in the afternoon and I realized I enjoyed spending time with him, that he was my favorite person, that I had nothing left for anyone else, and I felt ashamed.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“I had infinite patience with my one-year-old, whom I held to the behavioral standards of a two-year-old, and almost no patience with my husband, whom I held to the behavioral standards of a mother.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“I needed my suffering to be acknowledged. After that, maybe I’d think about getting through it.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“Inflicting abuse isn't the hard part. Controlling the narrative is the main job.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“By noon I’d showered”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“The child’s teacher told me the kids had all stated what they were thankful for. Most of them said candy or Ninja Turtles, but the child had said, Mom. I floated face down in housewifery.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“Elegies are the best love stories because they’re the whole story.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“when he said he didn’t have money to produce his art show and contribute to the household, I said, So basically you’re living in my house.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars

“Tonight I learned why my mother always squealed and shrank away when my father tried to touch her: She was a fortress. And inside that fortress was rage, and in the center of that rage was the pain of the insult of being treated like a stupid maid. My fortress is the same, with smaller hips, surrounded by a corona of migraine.”
― Sarah Manguso, Liars