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
understanding littles before-death
We are all, whether we know it or not, in search of a way to enrich, to drink during the fizz, to inhale deeper our gifts, in a desperation for some little understanding before death.
ambition desire made
What we have not has made us what we are. / ... / What we are not drives us to consummation.
good-marriage deals
A good marriage shuts out a very great deal.
want recognition terror
I asked myself the question, 'What do you want of your life?' and I realized with a start of recognition and terror, 'Exactly what I have - but to be commensurate, to handle it all better.
failure artist growing
Failure would only be if you had somewhere stopped growing. As far as I can see the whole duty of the artist is to keep on growing ...
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.
friendship bears sometimes
I know you have much to bear with in me, and I really do sometimes in you, but I have never looked at friendship in a deep sense as easy or entirely comfortable.
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.
growing-up hug beginners
The beginner hugs his infant poem to him and does not want it to grow up. But you may have to break your poem to remake it.
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.