May Sarton Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine - why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity?

  May Sarton

  Art, Children, Book

  "The Journals of May Sarton Volume One: Journal of a Solitude, Plant Dreaming Deep, and Recovering".

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• It is curious how any making of order makes one feel mentally ordered, ordered inside.

  May Sarton

  Order, Curious, Feels

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• Try making a poem as if it were a table, clear and solid, standing there outside you.

  May Sarton

  Trying, Tables, Clear

  May Sarton (2014). “Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel”, p.21, Open Road Media

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• I want feelings to be expressed, to be open, to be natural, not to be looked on as strange. It's not weird if you feel deeply.

  May Sarton

  Feelings, Want, Strange

  May Sarton, Earl G. Ingersoll (1991). “Conversations with May Sarton”, p.121, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• One could go on revising a prose page forever whereas there is a point in a poem when one knows it is done forever.

  May Sarton

  Forever, Done, Goes On

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• Solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people... precludes awareness of one's self so that after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.

  May Sarton

  Self, People, Solitude

  May Sarton (2014). “At Seventy: A Journal”, p.135, Open Road Media

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• A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

  May Sarton

  Death, Failure, Loss

  May Sarton (2014). “At Seventy: A Journal”, p.53, Open Road Media

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• It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.

  May Sarton

  Inspirational, Truth, Enough

  May Sarton (2017). “The Journals of May Sarton Volume One: Journal of a Solitude, Plant Dreaming Deep, and Recovering”, p.114, Open Road Media

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• It is a waste of time to see people who have only a social surface to show. I will make every effort to find out the real person, but if I can't, then I am upset and cross. Time wasted is poison.

  May Sarton

  Real, People, Effort

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.15, Open Road Media

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• I live alone, perhaps for no good reason, for the reason that I am an impossible creature, set apart by a temperament I have never learned to use as it could be used, thrown off by a word, a glance, a rainy day, or one drink too many. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there. I go up to Heaven and down to Hell in an hour, and keep alive only by imposing upon myself inexorable routines. I write too many letters and too few poems.

  May Sarton

  Writing, Rainy Day, Silence

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• Your poems will happen when no one is there.

  May Sarton

  Happens

  May Sarton (2014). “A Grain of Mustard Seed: Poems”, p.43, Open Road Media

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• ... love is healing, even rootless love.

  May Sarton

  Healing, Love Is

  May Sarton (1993). “A House of Gathering: Poets on May Sarton's Poetry”, p.217, Univ. of Tennessee Press

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• We are all jellyfish, too pitiful and too afraid of being disliked to be honest.

  May Sarton

  Honesty, Being Honest, Jellyfish

  May Sarton (2014). “The House by the Sea: A Journal”, p.136, Open Road Media

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• The more our bodies fail us, the more naked and more demanding is the spirit, the more open and loving we can become if we are not afraid of what we are and of what we feel. I am not a phoenix yet, but here among the ashes, it may be that the pain is chiefly that of new wings trying to push through.

  May Sarton

  Pain, Wings, Phoenix

  May Sarton (2014). “Recovering: A Journal”, p.119, Open Road Media

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• And I refuse to feel guilty about not letter-writing either. There are times when one can, times when one can't. In the times when an enormous amount of living is going on, one can't.

  May Sarton

  Writing, Letters, Guilty

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• Deep down there was understanding, not of the facts of our lives so much as of our essential natures.

  May Sarton

  Understanding, Essentials, Facts

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.7, Open Road Media

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• The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.

  May Sarton

  Danger, Dangerous

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.143, Open Road Media

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• For any writer who wants to keep a journal, be alive to everything, not just to what you're feeling, but also to your pets, to flowers, to what you're reading.

  May Sarton

  Flower, Reading, Feelings

  May Sarton, Earl G. Ingersoll (1991). “Conversations with May Sarton”, p.190, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I feel more alive when I'm writing than I do at any other time--except maybe when I'm making love.

  May Sarton

  Writing, Making Love, Alive

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• I write poems about relationships, love relationships, and I'm not able to do that all the time. I could go two years without writing poems, and then write a dozen. Having a novel to work on, with the intricate puzzle of character and plot to work out, is satisfying for the time there is no poetry.

  May Sarton

  Writing, Character, Years

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• Poems like to have a destination for their flight. They are homing pigeons.

  May Sarton

  Pigeons, Flight, Destination

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• It is clear that we do not exactly choose our poems; our poems choose us.

  May Sarton

  Poet, Clear

  May Sarton (2015). “Writings on Writing”, p.14, Open Road Media

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• Love cannot exorcise the gifts of hate. / Hate cannot exorcize what has no weight, / But laughter we can never over-rate.

  May Sarton

  Laughter, Hate, Weight

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• Poetry finds its perilous equilibrium somewhere between music and speech.

  May Sarton

  Speech, Equilibrium

  May Sarton (2015). “Writings on Writing”, p.13, Open Road Media

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• I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose-to find out what I think, to know where I stand.

  May Sarton

  Writing, Thinking, Purpose

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.4, Open Road Media

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