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
character writing feelings
My own feeling is that the only possible reason for engaging in the hard labor of writing a novel, is that one is bothered by something one needs to understand, and can come to understand only through the characters in the imagined situation.
journey novel journal
In the novel or the journal you get the journey. In a poem you get the arrival.
mountain define-you
Mountains define you. You cannot define / Them.
men differences understanding
I am realizing once and for all the difference as far as I am concerned of women and men and the necessity for both. With a man, however tender he is, one is feeding him - one is always and eternally understanding, mothering, supplying him with faith in himself (not in you).
good-marriage deals
A good marriage shuts out a very great deal.
loss loses
We only keep what we lose.
loneliness solitude faces
At any moment solitude may put on the face of loneliness.
sweet new-york paris
If I were to choose one single thing that that would restore Paris to the senses, it would be that strangely sweet, unhealthy smell of the Métro, so very unlike the dank cold or the stuffy heat of subways in New York.
passion thinking two
I think that passion if really intense is always destructive if not to the two involved, always to other people ...
forever done goes-on
One could go on revising a prose page forever whereas there is a point in a poem when one knows it is done forever.
lying writing heart
I feel often very close to the ecstasy and anguish which lie at the very heart of poetry - I am writing a lot.
writing firsts way
poetry is first of all a way of life and only secondarily a way of writing.
way needs language
over and over again I am struck by the wordiness of modern poetry, as if language had replaced experience and must be more and more extreme, intricate and in a way divorced from life itself. It seems as if what we all need is a great purification - but how will that come about?
poet feels
a poet never feels useful.