May Sarton
May Sarton
May Sarton is the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton, an American poet, novelist and memoirist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth3 May 1912
CountryUnited States of America
May Sarton quotes about
mistake optimistic past
In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.
revision creation process
Revision is not going back and fussing around, but going forward into the process of creation
loneliness solitude one-thing
Solitude is one thing and loneliness is another.
humor laughing able
We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.
good-marriage deals
A good marriage shuts out a very great deal.
journey novel journal
In the novel or the journal you get the journey. In a poem you get the arrival.
gardening going-away age
gardening is a madness, a folly that does not go away with age. Quite the contrary.
laughter hate weight
Love cannot exorcise the gifts of hate. / Hate cannot exorcize what has no weight, / But laughter we can never over-rate.
intimacy instant disillusion
instant intimacy was too often followed by disillusion.
couple writing thinking
If one is the kind of creature I am and wants to do the kind of writing I want to do, an undisturbed bourgeois existence with no distractions seems in order. A single meeting outside the family upsets one's whole inner web, makes one start off on two-days' thinking and weighing, destroys a delicate balance etc. etc. ... I now have enough friends to last me a lifetime and that is enough. I am going to close the doors and hibernate at least for a couple of years. I am frightfully depressed about my work. It seems to me perfectly mediocre.
wholeness
Women's work is always toward wholeness.
travel reality cities
This suspension of one's own reality, this being entirely alone in a strange city (at times I wondered if I had lost the power of speech) is an enriching state for a writer. Then the written word ... takes on an intensity of its own. Nothing gets exteriorized or dissipated; all is concentrated within.
bondage
Do we always make our freedom out of someone else's bondage?
pigeons flight destination
Poems like to have a destination for their flight. They are homing pigeons.