I wish I'd been born with your capacity for wonder. I wouldn't mind living a shorter life if my short life could be as vivid as yours.

— 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

No matter how far I try to travel from people, people always appear. Either they follow me, or they're already there, and I followed them, unwittingly.

— Sara Baume

Now I wonder if each artwork is in fact utterly inaccessible to everybody but the person to whom it is secretly addressed?

— Sara Baume

Our toys were sixteen or seventeen; only the very eldest were in their early twenties, because, apparently, I didn't envision anything of particular interest in life beyond twenty-five. And now I am a greater age than any of the toys were allowed to reach, older than I even cared to imagine as a child.

— Sara Baume

People don't like it when you say real things.

— Sara Baume

See how community is only a good thing when you're a part of it.

— Sara Baume

So it's as if,' I say, 'I'm okay in my own bones, but I know that my bones aren't living up to other people's version of what a life should be, and I feel a little crushed by that, to be honest, a little confused as to how to align the two things: to be an acceptable member of society but to be able to be my own bones both at once.

— Sara Baume

Sometimes things happen that give me cause to believe I no longer exist. Car park barriers which do not lift when I drive towards them, automatic doors which do not open automatically as I approach.

— Sara Baume