300 Arguments Quotes

“The trouble with letting people see you at your worst isn't that they'll remember; it's that you'll remember.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“The trouble with setting goals is that you’re constantly working toward what you used to want.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments

“You'll never know what your mother went through.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Difficulty becomes familiar, at least, if no less difficult.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“The trouble with comparing yourself to others is that there are too many others. Using all others as your control group, all your worst fears and all your fondest hopes are at once true. You are good; you are bad; you are abnormal; you are just like everyone else.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Only a fire can teach you what survives a fire. No, it teaches you what can survive that fire.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Some people will punish you merely for witnessing their weakness. Even if they sought you out and asked for help. Even if you helped. Especially if you helped.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Depression is hard to describe not just because it is complex and abstract but also because it occupies the part of us capable of describing things.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“I like writing that is unsummarizable, a kernel that cannot be condensed, that must be uttered exactly as it is.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Biographies should also contain the events that failed to foreshadow.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Sometimes a single sentence can be enough to fill the imagination completely. And sometimes a book's title is enough.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“I've written whole books in order to avoid writing other books.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“The fastest way to revise a piece of work is to send it, late at night, to someone whose opinion you fear. Then rewrite it, praying you'll finish in time to send a new version by morning.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“We like stories that are false and seem true (realist novels), that are true and seem false (true crime), that are false and seem false (dragons and superheroes), or that are true and seem true, but it's harder to agree on what that is.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Like a vase, a heart breaks once. After that, it just yields to its flaws.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Inner beauty can fade, too.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

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

“Think of this as a short book composed entirely of what I hoped would be a long book's quotable passages.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Anger conceals pain. It also conceals love.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“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

“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

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

“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

“Failure is good preparation for success, which comes as a pleasant surprise, but success is poor preparation for failure.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Happiness begins to deteriorate once it is named.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Respect the one-hit wonder not for his one hit but for all the days he must have suffered afterward, trying for another.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“There will come a time when people decide you've had enough of your grief, and they'll try to take it away from you.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

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

“I read sad stories to inoculate myself against grief. I watch action movies to identify with the quick-witted heroes. Both the same fantasy: I'll escape the worst of it.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Who seems a harmless fool to those above him is a malevolence to those beneath.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays