Quote

I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful hault, 'won't go,' or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person's face.

May Sarton

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May Sarton
Age: 83 †
Born: 1912
Born: May 3
Died: 1995
Died: July 16
Diarist
Poet
Writer
May Eleanor Sarton
Even
Break
Grind
Like
Face
Inadequate
Faces
Breaks
Moments
Crucial
Persons
Machine
Person
Innocent
Grinds
Feel
Machines
Explodes
Feels
Worse
Dreadful

More quotes by May Sarton

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It is, I assume, quite easy to wither into old age, and hard to grow into it.
May Sarton
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When I am alone the flowers are really seen I can pay attention to them. They are felt as presences. Without them I would die...they change before my eyes. They live and die in a few days they keep me closely in touch with the process, with growth, and also with dying. I am floated on their moments.
May Sarton
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I can understand people simply fleeing the mountainous effort Christmas has become... but there are always a few saving graces and finally they make up for all the bother and distress.
May Sarton
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At some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth.
May Sarton
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I tell the gods are still alive / And they are not consoling.
May Sarton
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Now I become myself. It’s taken time, many years and places.
May Sarton
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You can't plan for a seizure of feeling, and for this reason I put everything else aside when I'm inspired.
May Sarton
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Miracles cannot be explained, that is their miraculous nature.
May Sarton
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I can tell you that solitude Is not all exaltation, inner space Where the soul breathes and work can be done. Solitude exposes the nerve, Raises up ghosts. The past, never at rest, flows through it.
May Sarton
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It is clear that we do not exactly choose our poems our poems choose us.
May Sarton
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a poet never feels useful.
May Sarton
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Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.
May Sarton
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In the novel or the journal you get the journey. In a poem you get the arrival.
May Sarton
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we are never done with thinking about our parents, I suppose, and come to know them better long after they are dead than we ever did when they were alive.
May Sarton
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Love is our human miracle.
May Sarton
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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
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And one cold starry night / Whatever your belief / The phoenix will take flight / Over the seas of grief / To sing her thrilling song / To stars and waves and sky / For neither old nor young / The phoenix does not die.
May Sarton
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Am I too old, perhaps, ever to take in another's life to share with mine on a permanent basis? If so, I must make do with what I have... and what I have is a great richness of friends and a positively ardent love of nature. Not nothing!
May Sarton
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I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward
May Sarton
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For poetry exists to break through to below the level of reason where the angels and monsters that the amenities keep in the cellar may come out to dance, to rove and roar, growling and singing, to bring life back to the enclosed rooms where too often we are only 'living and partly living.
May Sarton