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
morning heart lunch
Lunches are just not good. They take the heart out of the day and the spaciousness from the morning's work.
writing thinking long
I am furious at all the letters to answer, when all I want to do is think and write poems. ... I long for open time, with no obligations except toward the inner world and what is going on there.
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 ...
anger people safety
I have sometimes wondered also whether in people like me who come to the boil fast (soupe au lait, the French call this trait, like a milk soup that boils over) the tantrum is not a built-in safety valve against madness or illness. ... The fierce tension in me, when it is properly channeled, creates the good tension for work. But when it becomes unbalanced I am destructive. How to isolate that good tension is my problem these days. Or, put in another way, how to turn the heat down fast enough so the soup won't boil over!
hate moving people
The poet must be free to love or hate as the spirit moves him, free to change, free to be a chameleon, free to be an enfant terrible. He must above all never worry about this effect on other people.
men america giving
What frightens me about America today is that in the large majority there is no active sense of the value of the individual: few citizens feel that they are the Republic, responsible for what happens. And when the individual in a democracy ceases to feel his importance, then there is grave danger that he will give over his freedom, if not to a Fascist State, then to the advertising men or Publicity Agents or to the newspaper he happens to read.
people experience helping
The tragic thing about learning from experience is I fear that one can only learn from one's own experience. Other people's - other nations' - experiences simply do not help. They can be imaginatively learned from. But people do not act on other people's experiences.
unexpected-gifts unexpected life-is
life is always bringing unexpected gifts.
writing letters guilty
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.
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.
people insensitivity feels
People who cannot feel punish those who do.
book thinking immortality
Do I think there's life after death? No, I think my books are my life after death.
dream humble humility
all great people are humble because great people have great work and are humbled by the largeness of their dreams.