After college, I started working in the gallery and found myself surrounded by a whole new set of people who had not yet grown accustomed to my antisocial tendencies, who had not yet learned to expect me to say no, and stopped asking. I was invited to go drinking and dancing again, and so, I tried.

— Sara Baume

And I felt like such a failure. I thought: I can't even do mental illness properly.

— Sara Baume

And out the bus window, here is my dead world come true, my whole dead world in motion.

— Sara Baume

And yet, here I am. Perceiving everything that is wonderful to be proportionately difficult; everything that is possible an elaborate battle to achieve. My happy life was never enough for me. I always considered my time to be more precious than that of other people and almost every routine pursuit—equitable employment, domestic chores, friendship—unworthy of it. Now I see how this rebellion against ordinary happiness is the greatest vanity of them all.

— Sara Baume

Art, and sadness, which last forever.

— Sara Baume

Blending into the tinctures and textures of the countryside. The tree which falls without any human hearing still falls, as the creatures who die without being found by a human still die.

— Sara Baume

But I have never wanted to be perceived as chatty and bright. I have always wanted to be solemn and mysterious.

— Sara Baume

But I know I will do neither; nothing. I have all the time in the world, and yet, I can't be bothered.

— Sara Baume

But no, now I see I never meant to Ben what Ben meant to me. If there was anything I said which resonated in return, he found a better speech elsewhere. My romance went no further than his coat.

— Sara Baume

But nowadays, I feel guilty that I am granted the immunity of the artistically gifted, having never actually achieved anything to prove myself worthy.

— Sara Baume