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I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose-to find out what I think, to know where I stand.

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
Stand
Written
Purpose
Find
Writing
Every
Think
Poem
Thinking
Novel

More quotes by May Sarton

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I am not a greedy person except about flowers and plants, and then I become fanatically greedy.
May Sarton
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The more our bodies fail us, the more naked and more demanding is the spirit, the more open and loving we can become if we are not afraid of what we are and of what we feel. I am not a phoenix yet, but here among the ashes, it may be that the pain is chiefly that of new wings trying to push through.
May Sarton
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We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.
May Sarton
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a poet never feels useful.
May Sarton
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There was such a thing as women's work and it consisted chiefly, Hilary sometimes thought, in being able to stand constant interruption and keep your temper. . . .
May Sarton
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When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach.
May Sarton
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We only keep what we lose.
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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We cannot afford not to fight for growth and understanding, even when it is painful, as it is bound to be.
May Sarton
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The creative person, the person who moves from an irrational source of power, has to face the fact that this power antagonizes. Under all the superficial praise of the creative is the desire to kill. It is the old war between the mystic and the nonmystic, a war to the death.
May Sarton
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Sometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands.
May Sarton
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About loving, I have little to learn from the young.
May Sarton
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“How does one grow up?” I asked a friend the other day. There was a slight pause then she answered, “By thinking.”
May Sarton
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Without anxiety life would have very little savor.
May Sarton
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It is sometimes the most fragile things that have the power to endure and become sources of strength.
May Sarton
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It is possible, I suppose, that we are returning to a Dark Age. What is frightening is that violence is not only represented by nations, but everywhere walks among us freely.
May Sarton
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I feel happy to be keeping a journal again. I've missed it, missed naming things as they appear, missed the half hour when I push all duties aside and savor the experience of being alive in this beautiful place.
May Sarton
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Joy, happiness ... we do not question. They are beyond question, maybe. A matter of being. But pain forces us to think, and to make connections ... to discover what has been happening to cause it. And, curiously enough, pain draws us to other human beings in a significant way, whereas joy or happiness to some extent, isolates.
May Sarton
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Human relations just are not fixed in their orbits like the planets -- they're more like galaxies, changing all the time, exploding into light for years, then dying away.
May Sarton
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Once more I realize that solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people (all naturally solitary people must feel this) precludes awareness of one's self, so after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.
May Sarton