Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Sarah Manguso

Quote by Sarah Manguso

Work

The Guardians: An Elegy for a Friend

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Sarah Manguso
Sarah Manguso

Sarah Manguso is an American writer born in 1974. Her work is known for its concise and profound style, covering personal experiences, memory, and emotions. Manguso's works include poetry, novels, and essays, which often explore themes of time, death, and interpersonal relationships. more

You May Also Like

“I became interested in librarians while researching my first book, about obituaries. With the exception of a few showy eccentrics, like the former soldier in Hitler's army who had a sex change and took up professional whistling, the most engaging obit subjects were librarians. An obituary of a librarian could be about anything under the sun, a woman with a phenomenal memory, who recalled the books her aging patrons read as children—and was also, incidentally, the best sailor on her stretch of the Maine coast—or a man obsessed with maps, who helped automate the Library of Congress's map catalog and paved the way for wonders like Google Maps.”

“Children are tender plants, rooted in the soil of their families. If they are only given pampering, like constant water and rich humus, they may grow wild and tangled with weeds. Schools, like gardeners, carefully prune and shape them, guiding their growth. In stony soil—strict or broken family—their growth may be stunted, but schools provide a fence of protection, nurturing them with love and compassion.”