The Two Kinds of Decay Quotes

“My existence shrank from an arrow of light pointing into the future forever to a speck of light that was the present moment. I got better at living in that point of light, making the world into that point. I paid close attention to it. I loved it very much.”
― Sarah Manguso, The Two Kinds of Decay

“If you think something's happened quickly, you're looking at only a part of it.”
― Sarah Manguso, The Two Kinds of Decay

“Chair or no chair: a binary relation. But the vicissitudes of moving the body around are infinite. You never know what a person in a chair can do.”
― Sarah Manguso, The Two Kinds of Decay

“In my experience nursing is waiting. The mother becomes the background against which the baby lives, becomes time. I used to exist against the continuity of time. Then I became the baby's continuity, a background of ongoing time for him to live against. I was the warmth and milk that was always there for him, the agent of comfort that was always there for him.

My body, my life, became the landscape of my son's life. I am no longer merely a thing living in the world; I am a world.”
― Sarah Manguso, The Two Kinds of Decay

“What about those yogis who can lie down on a bed of nails, then arise, streaming blood, then stop the flow of blood from each wound individually with the power of their minds? Isn't frailty often a choice?”
― Sarah Manguso, The Two Kinds of Decay

“Some things are so horrible they need to be hidden right after they become visible. They are too horrible to be seen except very slowly, or in very small amounts. Or they are too beautiful.”
― Sarah Manguso, The Two Kinds of Decay

“My friend Isabel says, When you’re writing even a short novel, with at least a couple of subplots, and God only knows how many characters, your brain holds the volume of it beyond the ability of your consciousness.

Of course.”
― Sarah Manguso, The Two Kinds of Decay

“Everything that happens is the last time it happens.”
― Sarah Manguso, The Two Kinds of Decay