I love that an idea can be so powerful it doesn't matter whether I've seen the artwork for real or not.

— Sara Baume

I never went downstairs to join my housemates around the television. I cooked dinner later than everyone else and carried the plate up to my bedroom. Furthermore, I knew they must have thought me aloof, or a little bit eccentric, or maybe even unkind, but I didn't care. Once the kitchen door swung shut behind me, I was alone, and so everything was okay.

— Sara Baume

In the days approaching Christmas, she always reminds me of the previous year: 'Jane crocheted you an entire poncho, and all you gave her was a bone-shaped beach stone.

— Sara Baume

In the face of immense tragedy—yet again—unexpected beauty.

— Sara Baume

I see foxes often, but always they are crossing fallow fields in the distance. Gold flecks on faraway expanses of green. Magnetic to the meandering eye. Enigmatic, unreachable.

— Sara Baume

It happens so seldom; I must catch and keep this slender yearning, a rare beetle in a jam-jar trap. But mustering will is not the same as wanting. I lie in the garden and think about all the footsteps between my body on the grass and my pencil-case and notebook on the table in the sun room. All the muscles I have to flex and relax to get myself there.

— Sara Baume

I think: by the time I'm old, nobody will be able to die anymore.

— Sara Baume

It's too warm for red wine; now I mix gin and tonics instead. I find they make the ordinary sensation of living lighter, less ruffled.

— Sara Baume

My mother likes odd numbers and is suspicious of the even ones. She reads a new book every week and is bewitched by black holes in the universe. She describes herself as an optimist, but she worries about everything—worries incessantly—worries on behalf of others when she feels they are not worrying adequately for themselves. And my mother misses her own mother, my grandmother, immensely, who only has a past now; who is only allowed to be as we remember her.

— Sara Baume

My mother says: 'People who suffer from anxiety are usually those with the most vivid imaginations.

— Sara Baume